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Theheir_of_slaves__ 


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Lib.  10M-N  '36 


THE  HEIR  OF  SLAVES 


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The  Heir  of  Slaves 

AN  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 


BY 

WILLIAM  PICKENS 

Professor  in  Talladega  College,  Alabama. 


THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 

BOSTON  NEW  TOEK  CHICAGO 


Copyright,  1911, 
L.  H.  Cabby. 


THE    RUMFORD    PRESS 
CONCORD  •  N  •  H  •  U  •  8  '  A- 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

My  Parentage 3 

To  Arkansas 21 

Beginning  School  in  Earnest 85 

A  Skiff-Ferry  School  Boy 49 

The  Stave  Factory  and  the  Sawmill  Lumber 

Yard 63 

You  Can  Have  Hope        79 

A  Christian  Missionary  College        ....  95 

Preparing  for  Yale  in  Ironwork  ....  109 
Yale — The  Henry  James  Ten  Eyck  Oratorical 

Contest 121 


[v] 


FOREWORD 

TT  IS  a  common  story;  there  were 
more  than  three  million  slaves; 
there  are  perhaps  ten  million  heirs 
born  of  the  slaves  since  1865.  What 
reason  can  there  be  for  writing  a  story 
which  is  so  common? 

One  reason  is  that  some  want  to 
know  the  story,  and  have  asked  for 
it.  These  several  requests  have  been 
prompted,  perhaps,  by  no  expectation 
of  anything  wonderful  in  the  story,  but 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  common  and  can 
therefore  stand  as  the  representative 
of  the  class.  This  last  reason  is  the  one 
that  emboldens  me  to  the  task.  The 
interests  of  a  class  may  justify  the 
examination  and  description  of  a  typi- 
cal specimen. 

I  shall  therefore  regard  myself  as 
speaking  to  friends.  I  shall  not  aim 
[vii] 


FOREWORD 


to  evaluate  the  thing  I  say,  but  I  shall 
simply  relate  the  incidents  and  leave 
the  worth  of  them  to  the  judgment  of 
the  audience.  If  I  am  frank,  it  is  only 
to  be  true.  Such  a  story  could  have 
no  self-glory  and  little  expectation  of 
applause. 


[viii] 


I 

MY  PARENTAGE 


THE  HEIR  OF  SLAVES 
I 

MY  PARENTAGE 

T  WAS  born  on  the  15th  day  of  Janu- 
ary, 1881,  according  to  the  recol- 
lection of  my  parents.  There  was  no 
record  of  the  sixth  child,  for  the  sixth 
baby  in  no  novelty  in  a  family.  But 
as  the  historian  finds  the  dates  of  old 
battles  by  the  comets  and  eclipses,  so 
can  we  approximate  this  event  by  an 
impressive  happening:  because  of  the 
martyrdom  of  a  good  President  I  nar- 
rowly escaped  the  honor  of  being  named 
Garfield  Pickens. 

With  natural  and  pardonable  curios- 
ity people  have  often  asked  me  about 
my  parentage,  and  if  I  knew  anything 
about  my  ancestry.  My  immediate 
parents  I  know,  and  have  known  some- 
[3] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

thing  of  one  or  two  of  my  grandparents. 
But  about  any  ancestry  more  remote 
than  this  all  that  I  can  know  is  that  it 
seems  natural  and  logical  to  conclude 
by  analogy  and  induction  that  I  prob- 
ably had  some  additional  forbears. 
Most  of  the  negroes  in  the  United 
States  who  are  as  many  as  thirty  years 
old  have  no  reliable  knowledge  of  ances- 
try beyond  perhaps  their  grandparents. 
The  family  tree  is  just  sprouting  or 
just  beginning  to  put  forth  shoots. 
How  the  causes  of  this  inhered  in  the 
system  of  slavery  is  well  known.  There 
are  good  and  sensible  reasons  for  keep- 
ing an  ancestral  record  of  certain  breeds 
of  horses,  but  little  reason  for  keeping 
that  of  slaves,  simply  because  the  worth 
of  a  man  depends  less  upon  the  value 
and  blood  of  his  father  than  does  the 
price  of  a  horse. 

Three-fourths  of  all  the  negroes  I 

have  ever  seen  had  other  blood.     Some- 
[4] 


MY   PARENTAGE 


times  it  was  not  visible  in  their  faces: 
the  blackest  man  may  have  a  mulatto 
grandmother  on  his  mother's  side. 
And  your  average  brown  negro — if  all 
the  different  sorts  of  blood  in  his  veins 
should  get  at  war  with  each  other,  the 
man  would  blow  up  like  a  stick  of 
dynamite. 

My  father  in  color  and  hair  is  African 
although  his  features  are  not  promi- 
nently African,  and  I  knew  one  of  his 
sisters  who  was  brown.  My  mother's 
mother,  who  lived  long  in  our  family 
and  "raised"  all  of  the  grandchildren, 
was  a  characteristic  little  African  wo- 
man, vivacious  and  longlived,  with  a 
small  head  and  keen  eyes.  She  could 
thread  her  own  needles  when  she  was 
eighty  years  of  age.  She  lived  for 
forty  years  with  a  broken  back,  the 
upper  part  of  her  body  being  carried 
in  a  horizontal  position,  at  right  angles 
to  her  lower  limbs,  so  that  she  must 
[5] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

support  her  steps  with  a  staff  if  she 
walked  far.  This  was  one  of  the  results 
of  slavery.  Being  a  high-tempered 
house-servant  in  that  system  she  had 
been  beaten  and  struck  across  the  back 
with  a  stick.  Even  in  her  old  age  her 
temper  rose  quick,  but  was  volatile,  and 
she  was  a  very  dear  and  most  help- 
ful grandmother.  My  mother's  father, 
whom  I  never  saw,  and  who  perhaps 
died  a  slave,  was  half  Cherokee  Indian, 
his  father  being  a  Cherokee.  I  suppose 
that  his  other  half  was  negro,  since  he 
was  married  in  slavery  to  my  grand- 
mother. 

My  mother  was  an  average-sized 
brown  woman,  whose  features  were 
somewhat  modified  by  her  Indian  strain 
and  whose  hair  was  black  and  of  a 
negro-Indian  texture.  She  was  simply 
famous  for  the  amount  of  hard  work 
she  could  do.  As  a  cook  she  could  get 
a  breakfast  in  the  shortest  possible 
[6] 


MY   PARENTAGE 


time;  as  a  washerwoman  she  could  put 
out  the  clothes  of  a  large  family  by 
noon.  And  her  work  must  have  been 
well  done,  for  she  could  never  supply  the 
demand  for  her  services,  and  she  died 
of  overwork  at  the  age  of  about  forty- 
five.  I  was  the  sixth  of  her  ten  chil- 
dren. 

My  birthplace  was  in  Anderson 
County,  South  Carolina,  near  Pendle- 
ton, in  a  rural  neighborhood  called 
"over  the  river,"  where  lies  the  first 
dim,  flickering  memory  of  the  humble 
estate  to  which  I  was  born.  My  par- 
ents were  farmers  of  the  tenant  or 
day-labor  class  and  were  ever  on  the 
move  from  cabin  to  cabin,  with  the 
proverbial  unacquisitiveness  of  the 
"rolling  stone."  They  were  illiterate, 
but  were  beginning  to  learn  to  read  the 
large-print  New  Testament  sold  by  the 
book  agents.  That  part  of  the  state 
was  exceedingly  poor,  with  red  hills 
[7] 


THE    HEIR   OF    SLAVES 

and  antiquated  agriculture.  From  such 
sections  of  the  old  South  the  immigra- 
tion agent  of  the  West  easily  induced 
many  negroes  to  cross  the  Mississippi 
into  debt-slavery.  My  parents  were 
industrious  but  improvident,  and  began 
early  to  talk  of  moving  to  Arkansas 
where  the  soil  was  fertile  and  wages 
high.  This  was  possible  only  by  allow- 
ing some  Western  farmer  to  pay  the 
fares  of  the  family  through  his  agent, 
and  by  signing  a  contract  to  work 
on  that  farmer's  land  until  the  debt 
was  paid  according  to  that  farmer's 
reckoning. 

The  earliest  family  moving  which 
I  remember  was  from  "over  the  river" 
to  "Price's  place,"  which  makes  my 
memory  reach  back  to  my  second  year. 
At  "Price's"  there  was  our  one-room 
cabin  on  a  small  hill  facing  the  larger 
hill  on  which  stood  the  "great  house' 
of  the  landowner.  I  remember  the 
[8] 


MY   PARENTAGE 


curiosity  of  our  first  clock,  an  "eight- 
day"  specimen,  which  my  father  im- 
mediately took  to  pieces  and  put  to- 
gether again;  and  he  still  boasts  that 
his  clock  has  never  been  to  the  repair 
shop.  Here,  too,  I  received  the  first 
impression  of  my  personal  appearance. 
I  had  a  large  head,  for  a  certain  comical 
minded  uncle  would  play  frightened 
whenever  I  came  near  him,  and  he 
dubbed  that  part  of  my  anatomy  "a 
wag'n-body." 

After  a  year  or  so  we  moved  from 
"Price's"  to  "Clark's  place,"  nearer 
Pendleton.  Here  I  received  my  first 
slight  acquaintance  with  the  English 
alphabet,  which  I  learned  so  readily 
that  my  sisters  took  delight  in  leading 
me  to  school  with  them,  although  I 
must  have  been  at  least  two  years 
under  school  age.  It  was  a  character- 
istic negro  schoolhouse  built  of  logs, 
with  one  door  and  one  window,  the 
[9] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

latter  having  no  panes  and  being  closed 
by  a  board  shutter  which  swung  on 
leather  hinges  outward.  The  house 
was  not  larger  then  a  comfortable  bed- 
room and  had  a  "fire-place"  opposite 
the  door.  The  children  faced  the  fire- 
place, so  that  the  scant  light  fell 
through  the  door  upon  their  books. 
There  were  no  desks;  the  seats  were 
long  board  benches  with  no  backs. 
The  teacher  insisted  that  the  students 
sit  in  statuesque  postures,  not  moving 
a  limb  too  often.  Persuasion  to  study 
and  good  deportment  consisted  of  a 
hickory  switch,  a  cone-shaped  paper 
"dunce  cap"  and  a  stool  on  which  the 
offender  must  stand  on  one  foot  for  an 
enormous  length  of  time.  Although  I 
had  readily  learned  my  elements  under 
sympathetic  tutelage  at  home,  about 
all  I  remember  of  this  first  schooling 
is  the  menacing  words  of  the  teacher, 
the  movements  of  that  switch  and  the 
[10] 


MY   PARENTAGE 


astonishing  balancing  acts  of  the  dunce 
cap  wearers.  The  chief  fountain  of 
academic  knowledge  in  such  schools 
was  the  famous  old  "blue-back  speller." 
After  leaving  the  nonsense  syllables  in 
the  beginning  of  that  book,  the  mile- 
stones of  attainment  were  first  the 
page  of  dissyllables  beginning  with 
"baker"  and  secondly  the  page  of  poly- 
syllables containing  "compressibility." 
A  person  interested  in  your  advance- 
ment might  ask  first  had  you  "got  to 
'baker'  yet,"  and  secondly  could  you 
spell  "compressibility." 

After  a  year  at  "Clark's  place"  we 
moved  to  Pendleton,  and  from  that 
time  till  I  reached  the  age  of  eighteen 
I  can  count  no  less  than  twenty 
removals  of  our  family. 

The  motives  that  carried  my  mother 

and  father  from  the  country  into  the 

little   town   of   Pendleton   were   more 

than  good;   they  were  sacred.     It  was 

[11] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

a  consideration  for  the  future  of  their 
children.  Having  lived  nearer  town 
for  a  year,  they  learned  that  the  houses, 
the  wages  and  the  schools  of  the  village 
were  superior  to  those  of  the  country. 
The  country  school  was  poorly  housed 
and  still  more  poorly  taught.  Its  ses- 
sions lasted  for  only  a  few  hot  weeks  of 
summer  after  the  "laying  by"  of  the 
crops,  and  for  a  few  cold  weeks  of 
winter  between  the  last  of  harvest  and 
the  time  for  clearing  the  fields.  School 
interests  were  secondary  to  farm  inter- 
ests; the  raising  of  children  must  not 
interfere  with  the  raising  of  cotton. 
The  landowner  would  not  tolerate  a 
tenant  who  put  his  children  to  school 
in  the  farming  seasons.  In  the  town, 
my  mother  had  cooked  and  washed, 
in  the  country  she  had  been  a  field 
hand.  A  cook  has  somewhat  better 
opportunities  to  care  for  small  children ; 

there   was    a   story   of   how   Mother, 
[12] 


MY   PARENTAGE 


returning  from  field  work  to  the  rail- 
fence  where  she  had  laid  the  baby  to 
sleep,  found  a  great  snake  crawling  over 
the  child.  In  the  country  my  father 
worked  while  another  man  reckoned. 

It  always  took  the  whole  of  what  was 
earned  to  pay  for  the  scant  "rations" 
that  were  advanced  to  the  family,  and 
at  settlement  time  there  would  be  a 
margin  of  debt  to  keep  the  family  per- 
ennially bound  to  a  virtual  owner.  A 
man  in  town  who  ran  a  bar  and  hotel, 
and  who  needed  help,  offered  to  pay 
this  margin  of  debt  and  bring  the  whole 
family  to  town  if  Father  would  be  his 
man  of  all  work  and  Mother  a  cook. 
Wages  were  small  but  paid  promptly, 
and  there  was  no  binding  debt.  They 
went,  as  one  instinctively  moves  from 
a  greater  toward  a  lesser  pain.  There 
was  one  certain  advantage;  the  chil- 
dren obtained  six  months  instead  of 

six  weeks  of  schooling. 
[13] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

My  parents  were  always  faithful 
members  of  the  Baptist  church,  and 
even  while  my  father  was  hotel  man 
and  "bartender,"  he  was  superintendent 
of  the  Sunday  school  of  his  village 
church.  Had  he  been  keeping  bar  for 
himself  he  would  have  been  excommu- 
nicated by  his  brethren.  An  inevitable, 
but  not  inalterable,  dual  moral  system 
has  grown  up  in  the  inter-racial  life  of 
the  South;  a  negro  may  be  tolerated 
by  his  own  race  in  doing  for  a  white 
man  what  would  not  meet  with  toler- 
ation if  done  for  himself;  and  a  white 
man  may  be  excused  by  his  own  race 
if  he  does  to  a  negro  what  would  be 
instantaneously  condemned  if  done  to 
a  white  man. 

Twenty   odd   years   ago   Pendleton 

was  a  characteristic  little  town  of  the 

older  South.     There  was  the  central 

public  "square"  on  one  side  of  which 

stood    the    "calaboose"   and   on   the 
[14] 


MY   PARENTAGE 


opposite  side  the  post  office.  It  was 
full  of  politics  and  whisky,  but  withal 
there  was  extraordinary  good  feeling 
between  the  white  and  the  black  race. 
The  employer  of  my  father  was  the 
head  man  of  the  village,  whom  the 
people  called  "town  councilor,"  a  posi- 
tion corresponding  to  the  mayoralty  in 
larger  towns.  This  man  was  a  boon 
companion  of  my  father,  and  they  ran 
the  town  together.  Race  antagonism 
seemed  not  to  touch  our  world.  I  can 
remember  many  things  which  indicate 
that  race  feeling  was  not  nearly  as  com- 
bustible in  Pendleton  then  as  it  is  in 
most  places  now.  For  example,  on 
Christmas  Day  the  black  folk  used  to 
say  that  "there  is  no  law  for  Christmas." 
And  so  the  young  negro  men,  in  a  good- 
natured  spree,  would  catch  the  lone 
policeman,  who  was  always  more  a  joke 
than  a  terror,  and  lock  him  in  the  cala- 
boose to  stay  a  part  of  Christmas  Day, 
[15] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

while  one  of  the  black  men  with  star  and 
club  would  strut  about  the  town  and 
play  officer — an  act  for  laughter  then, 
but  which  now  would  summon  the  mil- 
itia from  the  four  quarters  of  almost 
any  state  and  be  heralded  the  world 
over  as  ugly  insurrection. 

For  some  reason  at  this  period  wages 
were  steadily  declining  in  the  older 
states  of  the  South.  In  1887  the  wage 
for  doing  a  day's  work  or  picking  a 
hundred  pounds  of  cotton  in  the  fields 
was  thirty -five  or  forty  cents.  The 
Western  immigration  agent  was  busy 
telling  of  glorious  opportunities  beyond 
the  Mississippi,  and  many  minds  among 
black  people  were  being  turned  in  that 
direction.  After  several  years  of  vil- 
lage life,  and  after  engaging  in  various 
employments,  including  another  year 
of  farming,  we  moved  to  Seneca,  S.  C. 

Father  had  been  in  turn  farmer,  hotel 
[16] 


MY   PARENTAGE 


man,  section  hand,  brakeman  and 
fireman. 

In  these  awakening  years,  when  the 
mind  is  supposed  to  receive  so  much, 
I  had  about  two  short  terms  of  school- 
ing so  poor  that  in  New  England  it 
would  not  be  called  schooling  at  all. 
My  mother's  constant  talk  and  ambi- 
tion was  to  get  an  opportunity  "to 
school  the  children."  One  of  the 
chief  causes  of  the  rapid  advancement 
of  the  negro  race  since  the  Civil  War 
has  been  the  ambition  of  emancipated 
black  mothers  for  the  education  of 
their  children.  Many  an  educated 
negro  owes  his  enlightenment  to  the 
toil  and  sweat  of  a  mother. 

But  "hard  times"  and  the  immigra- 
tion agent  were  fast  persuading  my 
father  to  risk  the  future  of  his  family  in 
the  malarial  swamp-lands  of  Arkansas. 


[17] 


II 

TO  ARKANSAS 


[19] 


II 

TO  ARKANSAS 

A  T  last  an  agent  representing  a 
planter  in  the  Mississippi  River 
Valley  of  Arkansas  induced  my  father  to 
sign  a  contract  to  move  his  entire  family 
to  that  state.  In  order  to  appreciate  the 
persuasions  which  the  agent  used,  the 
ignorance  and  superstition  of  such  fam- 
ilies would  have  to  be  understood. 
Ignorant  people  are  too  quick  to  believe 
tales  of  other  places  and  other  times. 
Our  family  had  a  hundred  "signs,'* 
mostly  signs  of  evil.  By  the  ruddy 
glow  of  the  fire  at  nights  the  children 
were  told  of  ghosts,  of  strange  cats, 
dogs,  voices  and  sounds,  of  the  "no- 
headed  man,"  of  graveyards,  and  the 
weird  history  of  the  ill-famed  "three- 
mile  bottom"  near  the  village.  The 
Federal  soldiers  were  described  not  as 
[21] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

common  men,  but  as  beings  from  a 
super- world;  and  with  the  irony  of 
truth  Lincoln  was  pictured  as  more 
than  mortal. 

To  such  a  group  reports  from  the 
outside  world  come  with  a  feeling  of 
otherworldliness.  The  agent  said  that 
Arkansas  was  a  tropical  country  of 
soft  and  balmy  air,  where  cocoanuts, 
oranges,  lemons  and  bananas  grew. 
Ordinary  things  like  corn  and  cotton, 
with  little  cultivation,  grew  an 
enormous  yield. 

On  the  15th  of  January,  1888,  the 
agent  made  all  the  arrangements,  pur- 
chased tickets,  and  we  boarded  the 
train  in  Seneca,  S.  C,  bound  toward 
Atlanta,  Ga.  Our  route  lay  through 
Birmingham  and  Memphis,  and  at  each 
change  of  trains  there  seemed  to  be 
some  representative  of  the  scheme  to 
see  us  properly  forwarded,  like  so  much 

freight  billed  for  we  knew  not  where. 
L22] 


TO   ARKANSAS 


It  was  midwinter,  but  with  all  the 
unquestioning  faith  and  good  cheer  of 
our  race  we  expected  to  land  at  the 
other  end  of  our  journey  in  bright  sun- 
shine and  spring  weather. 

And  a  comical-looking  lot  we  must 
have  been.  We  had  no  traveling  cases, 
but  each  one  bore  some  curious  burden 
— sacks  of  clothes,  quilts,  bags,  bundles 
and  baskets.  When  we  left  our  home 
the  weather  was  comparatively  mild, 
but  as  fate  would  have  it,  the  nearer  we 
got  to  Arkansas,  the  colder  it  became. 
In  Memphis  the  snow  was  deep  and  the 
wind  biting.  The  faith  and  enthusiasm 
of  the  party  grew  less;  perhaps  the 
older  heads  were  waking  up  to  a  suspi- 
cion. The  further  we  got  from  our 
South  Carolina  home,  the  dearer  it 
seemed,  as  is  true  of  most  things  in  their 
first  abandonment. 

When  we  reached  a  small  station  in 

Arkansas,  like  freight  again  we  were 
[23] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

met  by  two  double-team  wagons  of  the 
unknown  planter  to  whom  we  were  con- 
signed. We  were  hauled  many  miles 
through  cypress  "brakes"  and  snow 
and  ice  sufficiently  thick  to  support  the 
teams.  The  older  people,  I  suppose, 
had  by  this  time  comprehended  the 
situation,  but  we  children  were  con- 
stantly peering  out  from  under  our 
quilts  and  coverings,  trying  to  discover 
a  cocoanut  or  an  orange  blossom,  while 
the  drivers  swore  at  the  mules  for  slip- 
ping on  the  solid  ice.  Perhaps  nothing 
could  equal  this  disappointment  unless 
it  be  the  chagrin  of  those  ignorant 
negroes  who  have  been  induced  to  go  to 
Africa  under  the  persuasion  that  bread 
trees  grew  there  right  on  the  brink  of 
molasses  ponds,  and  wild  hogs  with 
knives  and  forks  sticking  in  their  backs 
trotted  around  ready  baked! 

When  we  reached  the  estate  of  our 

consignee,   still   like  freight   we  were 
[24] 


TO   ARKANSAS 


stored  away,  bags,  bundles,  boxes  and 
all  of  us,  in  a  one-room  hut  to  await  the 
breaking  of  winter  and  the  beginning 
of  field  work. 

What  could  we  do?  The  planter  had 
the  contract  binding  us  hard  and  fast. 
Just  what  we  owed  for  transportation 
no  one  knew;  besides  we  had  been 
furnished  with  salt  meat,  meal  and 
molasses  for  the  first  weeks  of  enforced 
idleness,  and  we  were  supplied  with  a 
little  better  food,  including  sugar,  coffee 
and  flour,  when  field  work  began.  As 
in  the  case  of  any  property  on  which 
one  has  a  lease,  our  lessor  could  lay 
out  more  on  our  maintenance  in  the 
seasons  when  we  were  bringing  returns. 

When  the  first  year's  settlement  came 

around,  and  a  half  hundred  bales  of 

cotton  had  been  produced  by  the  family 

and  sold  by  the  planter,  Father  came 

home  with  sad,  far-away  eyes,  having 

been  told  that  we  were  deeper  in  debt 
[25] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

than  on  the  day  of  our  arrival.  And 
who  could  deny  it?  The  white  man 
did  all  the  reckoning.  The  negro  did 
all  the  work.  The  negro  can  be  robbed 
of  everything  but  his  humor,  and  in 
the  bottom  lands  of  Arkansas  he  has 
made  a  rhyme.  He  says  that  on  set- 
tlement day  the  landowner  sits  down, 
takes  up  his  pen  and  reckons  thus: 

"A  nought's  a  nought,  and  a  figger's  a  figger — 
All  fer  de  white  man — none  fer  de  nigger! 

But  we  were  not  long  depressed.  To 
keep  down  debts  in  the  ensuing  winter 
Mother  cooked  and  washed  and  Father 
felled  trees  in  the  icy  "brakes"  to  make 
rails  and  boards.  No  provisions  were 
drawn  from  the  planter.  The  old  debt 
remained,  of  course,  and  perhaps  took 
advantage  of  this  quiet  period  to  grow 
usuriously.  This  low  land  is  malarial, 
chills  and  fevers  returning  like  the  sea- 
sons. Our  medicine  and  physician,  too, 
[261 


TO   ARKANSAS 


had  to  be  secured  on  the  feudal  plan, 
the  planter  paying  the  bills.  Under 
such  a  system  the  physician  has  the 
greatest  possible  temptation  to  neglect 
the  patient;  his  pay  is  sure,  and  there 
is  no  competition.  The  spring  sick- 
ness was  miserable;  we  had  come  from 
an  elevated,  healthy  country,  and  our 
constitutions  fell  easy  prey  to  the  germs 
of  the  lowlands. 

For  the  first  year  the  children  were 
kept  out  of  school  in  hope  of  getting 
rid  of  the  debt.  Very  small  children 
can  be  used  to  hoe  and  pick  cotton, 
and  I  have  seen  my  older  sisters  drive 
a  plow.  The  next  year  we  attended 
the  short  midsummer  and  midwinter 
sessions  of  the  plantation  school.  The 
school  was  dominated  by  the  inter- 
ests of  the  planter;  when  the  children 
were  needed  in  the  fields  he  simply  com- 
manded the  school  to  close.     It  was  an 

old-fashioned  district  school,  where  the 
[27] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

spelling  classes  stood  in  line  with  recog- 
nized "head"  and  "foot."  Your  abil- 
ity to  spell  was  denoted  by  your  position 
in  the  line  relative  to  the  "head"  and 
the  "foot."  When  your  neighbor 
toward  the  head  missed  a  word  and 
you  spelled  it,  you  "turned  him  down" 
with  all  others  who  had  missed  that 
word  in  succession,  that  is,  you  took 
your  position  above  them.  If  you  were 
absent  from  a  class,  when  you  returned, 
whatever  had  been  your  position  in  the 
line,  you  had  to  "go  foot."  I  had  a 
sister  a  year  or  so  older  than  I,  who 
stood  "head"  about  all  of  the  time, 
while  I  stood  second;  and  we  used  to 
stay  home  a  day  for  the  exquisite  pleas- 
ure of  going  foot  and  turning  the  whole 
class  down.  This  sister  had  a  phenom- 
enal memory  when  a  child. 

The  second  year  the  whole  family 
plunged  into  work,  and  made  a  bigger 

and   better   crop.     But   at   reckoning 
[28] 


TO   ARKANSAS 


time  history  repeated  itself;  there  was 
still  enough  debt  to  continue  the  slav- 
ery. If  the  debt  could  not  be  paid  in 
fat  years,  there  was  the  constant  danger 
that  lean  years  would  come  and  make 
it  bigger.  But  there  was  the  contract 
— and  the  law;  and  the  law  would  not 
hunt  the  equity,  but  would  enforce 
the  letter  of  the  contract.  It  was  un- 
derstood that  the  negro  was  unreliable, 
and  the  courts  must  help  the  poor 
planters. 

There  was  but  one  recourse — the  way 
of  escape.  The  attempt  must  be  exe- 
cuted with  success,  or  there  might  be 
fine  and  peonage.  On  some  pretext 
my  father  excused  himself  and  went 
to  Little  Rock.  A  few  miles  out  of 
that  city  he  found  a  landowner  who 
would  advance  the  fares  for  the  family 
and  rent  to  us  a  small  farm.  This 
looks  at  first  sight  like  "jumping  from 

the  frying-pan  into  the  fire,"  but  a 
[29] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

rented  farm  with  a  definite  loan  is  a 
different  proposition  from  a  state  of 
debt-slavery,  where  the  creditor  sells 
all  the  produce  and  does  all  the  count- 
ing. Moreover,  when  a  condition  is 
about  as  bad  as  it  can  be,  there  is  a 
tendency  in  human  nature  to  move  on 
to  another  bad  condition  with  a  sort  of 
desperate  venture.  Human  nature  will 
flee  from  a  known  condition  that  is  very 
bad  to  an  unknown  condition  that 
might  be  worse,  in  spite  of  Lord  Ham- 
let's soliloquy.  And  so  one  night  the 
young  children  and  some  goods  were 
piled  into  a  wagon  and  the  adults  went 
afoot.  By  morning  we  were  in  the 
town  of  Augusta,  twelve  or  fifteen  miles 
away,  where  we  caught  the  first  train. 
I  have  one  very  pleasant  recollection 
of  the  place  from  which  we  had  escaped. 
An  aged  negro,  a  characteristic  Uncle 
Remus,  would  come  some  nights  and 

relate  to  us  quaint  animal  stories.     The 
[301 


TO   ARKANSAS 


antics  and  cleverness  of  "Bre'r  Rabbit, 
Bre'r  Bar,  Bre'r  Fox,  Sis'  Cow  and 
Bre'r  Tommy  Mud  Turtle"  did  much 
to  enliven  the  dullness  of  the  hours. 


[31] 


Ill 

BEGINNING  SCHOOL  IN  EARNEST 


m 

BEGINNING  SCHOOL  IN  EARNEST 

rpHE  desperate  move  to  Galloway,  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Little  Rock, 
was  by  no  means  an  unlucky  one.  For 
one  whole  year,  of  course,  we  children 
were  kept  out  of  school  to  clear  up  the 
new  debt.  The  debt  was  paid.  Mean- 
while my  mother  heard  that  in  the 
city  of  Little  Rock  and  in  the  town 
Argenta,  across  the  river  from  Little 
Rock,  there  were  nine  months'  term 
of  school.  Think  of  it!  Nine  months 
of  schooling  for  the  children. 

We  moved  to  Argenta  in  the  winter 
of  1890-91.  This  move  cityward  was 
not  prompted,  as  is  usually  charged 
in  such  cases,  by  any  desire  to  get 
away  from  work,  but  by  the  high  mo- 
tives of  education  and  the  future.  The 
[35] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

prospect  struck  me  with  so  much  force 
that  I  set  to  work  and  learned  to  write 
before  I  could  be  sent  to  school.  I 
could  not  enter  at  once — work  had 
to  be  done  and  means  gotten  so  that 
we  could  start  in  the  fall  of  1891.  All 
members  of  the  family  worked  cease- 
lessly, about  the  homes  in  the  city  and 
on  the  farms  near  the  city.  While  run- 
ning errands  and  making  fires  at  a  cer- 
tain hotel  I  saw  and  recognized  the 
face  of  a  quack  doctor,  a  man  with  long 
hair,  who  had  once  come  through  the 
bottom  lands  from  which  we  had  es- 
caped and  had  frightened  my  mother 
out  of  all  her  ready  cash  for  his  cure-all 
medicines  by  telling  her  that  I  had 
consumption.  Mentioning  the  incident 
to  him,  "Are  you  the  man?'*  asked  I, 
with  boyish  frankness.  And  he,  with 
quack-doctor  frankness,  replied,  "That 
depends,   my  boy,   upon  whether  the 

medicine  helped  or  hurt  you,  and  upon 
[361 


BEGINNING   SCHOOL 

whether  you  would  like  to  buy  some 
more." 

The  Argenta  schools  opened  in  Sep- 
tember. We  could  not  attend  regularly 
in  the  weeks  that  preceded  Christmas, 
for  we  were  at  work  picking  cotton 
in  the  neighboring  fields.  It  took  the 
energies  of  the  whole  family  to  get  a 
start.  My  attendance  before  Christ- 
mas was  for  only  a  few  scattering  days. 
After  Christmas,  however,  I  started  in 
school  not  to  miss  another  day  during 
that  school  year — not  to  miss  another 
day  for  the  next  seven  years'  school 
years — and  indeed  not  to  miss  another 
unnecessary  day  until  I  had  finished  at 
Yale  in  1904. 

This  was  my  real  start  in  school, 

and  I  was  now  nearly  eleven  years  old. 

As  a  peaceful  country  boy  I  was  at  first 

imposed  upon,  but  one  fine  day  I  laid 

aside  my  unwarlike  habits  and  became 

sufficiently  belligerent  to  win  the  respect 
[37] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

of  a  certain  class  of  my  fellows.  I 
had  to  fight  my  way  on  the  playground 
as  well  as  in  the  classroom,  and  at  the 
same  time  I  had  to  render  my  accounts 
and  make  my  peace  with  the  stern 
government  of  a  teacher  who  was  a 
fine  instructor  and  a  severe  discipli- 
narian— just  the  proper  governor  for 
such  a  rebellious  little  state  as  a  city 
public  school.  I  remember  how  at  the 
end  of  that  school  year  he  called  me 
out,  with  his  brows  lowering  as  if  a 
storm  was  going  to  break,  and  sternly 
commanded  me  to  take  my  seat  on  the 
bench  in  front  of  his  desk — the  well- 
known  judgment  seat  where  many  a 
little  sinner  had  been  called  to  a  sure, 
even  if  a  reluctant,  repentance.  I 
began  mentally  to  review  my  day's 
record  in  order  to  anticipate  the  accusa- 
tion, when  he  with  the  same  sternness 
of  voice  began  to  pronounce,  "This 
boy" — then  hesitating  and  transfixing 
[38] 


BEGINNING   SCHOOL 

me  with  his  terrible  eye — "entered 
school  three  months  late,  started  be- 
hind everybody  else,  and  now  he's  the 
leader  of  his  class!" 

This  teacher's  name  was  J.  S.  Pleas- 
ant, and  although  he  was  very  strict, 
the  name  is  not  at  all  inapplicable  to 
his  general  character.  He  was  my 
teacher  for  the  following  four  years. 
Very  often  when  the  teacher  had  passed 
a  question  or  a  problem  around  to  all 
the  rest  of  the  class  and  they  had  failed 
to  answer  or  to  solve  it,  he  would  say, 
"Well,  'Always  Ready'  will  take  it"— 
which  was  a  nickname  he  sometimes 
applied  to  me. 

In  a  personal  history  I  might  be 

expected  to  tell  about  my  school  career 

and  record.     In  mathematics  I  never 

received  less  than  100  per  cent,  as  a 

daily  average,   and  only  once  did  I 

make  less  than  100  per  cent,  on  an 

examination  in  that  subject.     I  state 
[39] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

this  fact  because  so  many  men  and 
women  of  the  white  race  have  asked 
me  particularly  how  I  fared  in  the  sub- 
ject of  mathematics. 

I  committed  my  lessons  to  memory. 
The  lessons  in  physiology  and  history 
I  learned  verbatim  every  day,  so  that 
I  could  repeat  them,  just  as  they  were 
written,  with  as  much  ease  as  I  can  say 
the  Lord's  Prayer.  When  I  reached 
the  high  school  we  had  a  large  book 
known  as  "Barnes's  General  History." 
The  lessons  were  from  five  to  ten  pages, 
and  I  had  acquired  the  ability  to  com- 
mit them  by  reading  them  three  times 
over.  This  I  did  every  day.  The 
history  teacher  at  the  end  of  the  year 
who,  after  having  me  stand  and  recite 
the  last  lesson  verbatim,  said,  "I  never 
believed  that  he  would  go  through  this 
whole  book  in  that  way."  For  the  last 
few  minutes  of  each  recitation  during 

the  year  she  had  asked  me  to  rise  and 
[40] 


BEGINNING   SCHOOL 

go  through  the  whole  lesson,  as  in 
declamation.  She  would  then  ques- 
tion me,  evidently  to  see  if  I  knew  the 
'parts  as  well  as  the  whole.  Any  ques- 
tion in  the  lesson  would  be  answered; 
I  had  not  learned  by  sound  merely. 

I  was  deeply  in  love  with  school  and 
study.  Very  often  I  reached  the  school- 
house  before  the  janitor  arrived.  From 
the  nickels  and  dimes  which  I  re- 
ceived for  errands  and  small  jobs  I 
would  save  sufficient  money  to  buy 
my  books.  When  I  was  attending 
the  grammar  school  my  mother  endeav- 
ored one  day  to  keep  me  at  home  to 
draw  water  for  the  washing.  She  never 
tried  it  again — I  cried  and  pleaded 
as  if  my  heart  would  burst.  The  pros- 
pect of  missing  my  classes  for  a  day 
seemed  to  me  absolutely  unbearable.  It 
seemed  that  it  would  tear  down  all  that  I 
had  builded.   My  mother  seized  a  switch 

to  chastize  me,  but  when  she  listened 
[41] 


THE   HEIROF   SLAVES 

to  my  words  and  looked  into  my  face 
she  saw  that  it  was  not  rebellion,  and 
with  a  rather  satisfied  laugh  she  said 
that  I  might  go,  if  I  was  that  "crazy" 
about  school.  I  can  see  now  that  she 
was  rather  proud  of  the  event,  for 
never  again  did  she  make  any  arrange- 
ment that  would  keep  me  out  of  school 
for  a  day.  The  whole  family  came  to 
regard  my  attendance  at  school  as  a 
foregone  conclusion.  The  children 
called  me  "old  man,"  because  I  would 
not  play  until  after  I  had  learned  my 
lessons.  These  were  almost  invariably 
learned  before  sundown.  At  the  end 
of  that  very  year  I  received  from  the 
teacher  a  prize  for  being  "never  absent, 
never  tardy."  It  was  a  book  entitled 
"Our  Manners  and  Social  Customs," 
and  it  was  the  first  book  outside  of  a 
school  text  that  I  had  ever  read. 
The  opportunity  which  a  mother's 

pride  created  for  my  schooling  during 
[42] 


BEGINNING   SCHOOL 

her  life  could  not  continue  after  her 
death.  She  died  of  overwork  and  con- 
sequent broken  health.  She  had  been 
determined  to  keep  her  children  in 
school  and  had  worked  from  early 
morning  till  late  at  night  to  that  end. 
We  seldom  waked  early  enough  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  her,  and  before  her 
return  at  night  sleep  had  weighed  down 
the  eyelids  of  the  younger  children. 

I  had  just  entered  upon  my  fourth 
year  in  the  city  school  when  my  mother 
died  in  October.  Imagine,  if  you  can, 
the  sorrow  and  confusion,  amounting 
almost  to  dismay,  that  filled  the  heart 
and  mind  of  a  boy  of  thirteen,  who  was 
ambitious  and  who  knew  that  his 
mother  was  the  mainstay  of  his  educa- 
tion and  his  future — a  boy  who  loved 
school  as  dearly  as  any  other  boy  ever 
loved  a  gun  or  a  motor-cycle.  I  knew 
what  my  mother  had  meant  to  the 

family  and  that  without  her  it  would 
[43] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

be  impossible  for  my  father  to  keep 
all  the  children  in  school.  It  was  her 
love  and  ambition,  I  knew,  that  had 
given  me  the  high  privilege  of  study, 
and  without  her  I  could  not  be  certain 
of  my  daily  bread  for  the  school  year 
on  which  we  had  just  entered. 

But  the  ways  of  Providence  are 
inscrutable,  and  this  confusion  and  pre- 
dicament thrust  upon  me  a  blessing.  I 
secured  a  place  to  earn  my  board  by 
rising  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
and  also  working  after  school  hours 
until  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening — and  I 
got  my  lessons  just  as  well,  or  better 
than  ever  before.  Out  of  misfortune 
and  a  hard  situation  I  had  to  pluck 
independence. 

In  this  temporary  confusion  one 
thought  was  of  more  permanent  help 
to  me  than  all  other  things.  Mother 
had  taught  us  to  believe  in  God,  and  I 
reasoned  that  God  would  not  cause 
[44] 


BEGINNING   SCHOOL 

such  a  good  mother  to  begin  such  a 
good  work  and  then  remove  that  mother 
without  intending  that  in  some  other 
way  that  work  was  to  go  on.  The 
thought  led  me  on  and  on  to  a  greater 
and  greater  faith  in  my  opportunities. 


[45] 


IV 
A  SKIFF-FERRY  SCHOOL  BOY 


IV 

A  SKIFF-FERRY  SCHOOL  BOY 

TN  THE  following  year  I  became  a 
ferryman  on  the  Arkansas  River 
to  support  myself  during  the  last  year 
of  the  grammar  school.  The  grammar 
school  at  that  time  completed  the  ninth 
year,  the  high  school  adding  three 
years  more. 

The  town  of  Argenta,  which  for  a 
brief  space  bore  the  appellation  of 
North  Little  Rock,  is  situated,  as  the 
latter  name  implies,  on  the  left  bank 
of  the  Arkansas  River  opposite  the 
City  of  Little  Rock.  In  the  early  'OO's 
Argenta  was  famed  as  one  of  the  worst 
places  in  the  United  States;  debauch- 
ery, blood  and  murder  were  no  uncom- 
mon spectacles.  The  incoming  traveler 
shrugged  his  shoulders  when  he  heard 

the  name  "Argenta." 
4  [  49  ] 


'• 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

At  that  time  there  were  only  two 
railroad  bridges,  adapted  also  for  foot 
and  wagon  passage;  and  all  passers  had 
to  pay  toll,  the  foot  fare  per  capita  being 
five  cents.  This  condition  gave  rise 
to  another  industry,  carried  on  chiefly 
by  negro  men,  that  of  a  "skiff  ferry." 
These  small  boats  in  which  the  boat- 
man uses  two  oars  and  sits  with  his 
back  towards  the  fore,  were  used  to 
row  passengers  over  the  Arkansas  to 
and  from  Argenta  to  the  foot  of  Main 
Street  in  Little  Rock.  The  fare  had 
been  five  cents,  but  under  the  stress 
of  competition  it  had  become  by  this 
time  five  cents  for  the  round  trip. 
There  were  about  a  dozen  skiffmen 
earning  each  from  two  to  three  dollars 
a  day.  I  quickly  mastered  all  this 
ferry-craft,  sometimes  rowing  a  boat 
myself  and  sometimes  working  as  a 
second  oarsman,  assisting  one  of  the 
men.  My  average  wage  was  about 
[50] 


SCHOOL   BOY 


forty  cents  a  day.  When  I  rowed  a 
boat  alone  I  received  more;  when  I 
rowed  as  an  assistant  my  pay  was  at 
the  mercy  of  the  principal,  and  he 
paid  me  according  to  his  earnings  or 
his  fancy.  I  was  soon  as  good  an  oars- 
man as  any  man  I  worked  with,  but  I 
was  only  a  school  boy,  fourteen  years 
of  age,  and  no  one  would  think  of  pay- 
ing me  a  man's  wages  even  for  a  man's 
work.  But  the  pittance  was  saving  me 
my  education  and  my  future;  and  boy 
although  I  was,  I  looked  at  the  present 
circumstance  in  the  light  of  the  future, 
and  never  thought  that  the  condition 
was  too  hard,  but  only  the  high  price 
of  a  valuable  possession. 

This  river  work  also  profited  me 
physically;  the  use  of  two  oars  is  con- 
ducive to  symmetry  of  body,  and  there 
is  no  danger  of  the  one-sided  develop- 
ment which  Ben  Hur  dreaded  from  the 
one-oar  method  of  the  Roman  galley. 
[51] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

There  had  been  some  family  doubts 
about  the  soundness  of  my  constitu- 
tion, after  the  hard  wear  in  the  bottom 
lands  of  Arkansas,  but  this  ferry  work 
remade  my  shoulders  and  chest  and 
lungs.  During  the  school  year  I  could 
row  on  Saturdays,  and  could  get  a  boat 
by  myself  on  Sundays  and  work  until 
Sunday  school  time  and  afterwards. 

I  worked  again  on  the  ferry  in  the 
summer  of  1896,  and  any  ferryman  was 
glad  to  have  my  services,  as  I  was  an 
able  oarsman  and  also  a  hustler  in 
securing  passengers. 

During  the  summer  of  1896  a  new 
problem  was  before  me  for  solution  in 
reference  to  my  education.  I  had 
entered  the  Argenta  school  five  years 
before,  knowing  nothing  save  to  read 
and  spell  simple  words  and  to  write  in 
my  self-taught  style.  I  had  not  missed 
a  day  or  an  hour  of  school  since  that 
first  year,  and  I  had  led  all  of  my 
[52] 


SCHOOL   BOY 


classes  all  of  the  time.  The  grammar 
school  course  was  now  completed  and  to 
stop  seemed  a  calamity.  There  was  no 
high  school  in  the  district  and  no 
accessible  private  school;  besides,  I 
could  not  pay  for  private  instruction. 
There  was  a  High  School  in  Little  Rock 
to  which  students  from  our  side  of 
the  river  could  not  go  except  by  special 
permission  of  the  school  authorities, 
and  only  then  by  paying  two  dollars 
and  fifty  cents  per  month.  I  could 
not  have  much  hope  of  getting  into 
this  school,  but  against  the  bare  possi- 
bility I  saved  my  earnings  on  the  ferry, 
bought  none  of  the  things  which  would 
please  a  boy  of  fifteen  years,  and  came 
to  the  end  of  the  summer  with  about 
forty  dollars  in  a  savings  bank,  prac- 
tically every  cent  that  I  had  earned. 

There    was    one    fortunate    circum- 
stance: the  principal  of  the  Argenta 
school  was  a  boarder  in  the  home  of 
[53] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

the  principal  of  the  Little  Rock  High 
School  and  had  constantly  praised  me  as 
a  student.  Some  days  before  the  open- 
ing of  school  I  was  called  to  the  home 
of  the  High  School  principal  to  take 
the  entrance  examinations.  I  have 
heard  him  say  since  that  in  each  of  the 
subjects  of  arithmetic,  grammar,  Uni- 
ted States  history  and  spelling  I  was 
marked  100  per  cent.,  and  that  espe- 
cially in  the  subject  of  arithmetic  he  had 
looked  up  "catch"  problems  to  test 
the  value  of  my  former  principal's 
praises.  However  that  may  be,  when 
I  went  to  register  at  the  offices  of  the 
Board  of  Education,  I  was  not  too 
minutely  questioned  as  to  the  "resi- 
dence of  parents,"  etc.,  the  superin- 
tendent taking  no  seeming  notice  of 
the  fact  that  I  was  from  over  the  river. 
And  when  I  reached  the  secretary's 
desk  in  the  line  of  applicants  and  re- 
ceived my  certificate  of  entrance  to  the 
[54] 


SCHOOL   BOY 


High  School  of  Little  Rock,  what  a 
critical  moment  was  passed,  what  a 
vista  was  opened  for  me!  Three  more 
years  of  schooling  were  assured.  I 
could  work  on  the  ferry  in  summer  and 
at  week-ends  to  buy  necessary  books 
and  clothing.  I  plunged  into  that 
High  School  work  with  a  zest  such  as  I 
have  seldom  experienced  since.  My 
never-absent,  never-tardy  record  was 
maintained,  and  indeed  during  the 
three  High  School  years  only  once  was 
I  absent,  and  then  because  of  an  illness 
that  took  me  for  a  day  in  the  spring  of 
my  last  year. 

When  I  entered  the  High  School  the 
class  had  had  a  beginners'  algebra  for 
one  year,  and  were  now  taking  up  the 
more  advanced  book.  I  had  never 
studied  that  subject,  but  at  the  end 
of  the  first  month  or  so  I  was  ranked 
first  in  that  study.  These  High  School 
classmates  set  out  for  my  scalp,  for  my 
[55J 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

conquest  and  undoing.  They  seemed 
to  presume,  what  men  usually  presume 
under  similar  circumstances,  that  the 
new  comer  is  unduly  ambitious,  that  he 
is  simply  "showing  off"  because  he  is 
new,  and  that  the  pace  which  he  has 
set  will  not  and  cannot  last.  They 
attacked  me  on  every  side;  they  picked 
every  possible  flaw  in  my  work  and 
recitations,  and  in  their  zeal  they  some- 
times found  impossible  flaws.  They 
laughed;  they  ridiculed;  they  studied; 
they  worked  valiantly.  I  kept  on. 
They  only  stimulated  me;  they  filled 
me  with  a  most  exhilarating  feeling  for 
my  work.  They  did  for  my  education 
what  no  teacher  in  the  world  could 
have  done;  they  made  me  study  and 
learn  what  I  had  previously  supposed 
I  knew.  They  combined ;  they  attacked 
first  in  one  subject,  then  in  another. 
They  succored  each  other  clandes- 
tinely. But  each  month  and  term  told 
[56] 


SCHOOL   BOY 


for  me  a  better  and  better  story.  And 
before  the  end  of  my  High  School 
course  I  had  reached  that  uninteresting 
point  in  the  career  of  a  winner  where 
his  rivals  give  up  and  concede  him  vic- 
tories which  he  does  not  win,  and  the 
teachers  had  often  to  upbraid  my  class- 
mates for  letting  errors  go  by  unchal- 
lenged simply  because  I  had  made  them. 
But  in  conquering  their  admiration  I 
did  not  lose  their  love.  I  had  played 
fair,  and  they  were  not  slow  to  appre- 
ciate the  fact. 

And  how  did  I  support  myself  mean- 
while? My  father  gave  me  what  as- 
sistance he  could  afford;  wages  were 
poor  and  there  were  younger  children. 
And  his  groceryman  was  continually 
telling  him  that  if  he  were  in  father's 
place  he  would  not  allow  an  able-bodied 
boy  to  go  to  school  while  he  himself 
worked. 

And  other  men?     Well,  other  men 
[57] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

praised  me;  they  did  not  assist  me. 
And  perhaps  it  is  better  that  human 
nature  is  constituted  so;  men  will 
praise  a  struggler  when  they  have  no 
thought  of  helping  him.  Help  is  very 
often  a  doubtful  blessing,  and  some- 
times praise  is  too,  and  this  reflection 
is  a  convenient  solace  to  those  who 
would  not  help.  If  every  person  who 
named  me  "smart"  should  have  been 
required  by  law  to  give  me  a  nickel 
I  should  have  had  at  least  no  financial 
troubles. 

During  my  first  year  in  the  High 
School  I  continued  to  work  on  the  ferry. 
But  when  summer  came  again,  my 
success  was  threatened  by  a  new  dan- 
ger; the  public-spirited  citizens  of  Little 
Rock  were  building  a  "free  bridge" 
across  the  Arkansas  River  from  the 
foot  of  Main  Street,  and  this  bridge 
was  to  be  opened  on  the  Fourth  of 

July.    The  famous  old  ferry  that  had 
[581 


SCHOOL   BOY 


existed  from  the  foundation  of  the  city 
was  then  to  die.  The  passing  of  the 
old  ferry  seemed  the  passing  of  a  friend. 
I  had  usually  carried  a  book  on  my 
oarsman's  seat  so  that  I  could  read  or 
study  while  waiting  for  passengers; 
and  as  I  rowed  to  and  fro  I  had  conju- 
gated Latin  verbs  to  the  stroke  of  the 
oars. 

In  the  face  of  a  free  bridge  how  was  I 
to  prepare  for  the  Middle  Year  of  the 
High  School  and  pursue  it  during  the 
term? 


[59] 


V 

THE    STAVE    FACTORY    AND    THE 

SAWMILL  LUMBER  YARD 


V 

THE     STAVE     FACTORY    AND     THE 
SAWMILL  LUMBER  YARD 

rpHERE  was  a  "stave  factory"  and 
cooper  shop  in  Argenta  for  the 
manufacture  of  barrels  and  kegs,  and 
one  thing  that  comes  into  the  process 
of  making  the  barrel  heads  is  to  stack 
the  green  boards,  when  they  are  first 
sawed  from  the  blocks,  and  to  con- 
struct the  stack  so  that  air  circulation 
will  dry  them.  They  were  piled  in 
polygonal  hollow  squares  by  first  lay- 
ing a  polygon  of  the  pieces  of  "headin' " 
on  the  ground  and  then  continuing 
round  and  round  as  the  stack  grew 
higher,  up  to  fifty  or  more  feet,  or  as 
high  as  the  one  on  the  ground  who  was 
"pitchin'  headm',"  could  shoot  the 
short  boards  up  through  the  air  to  the 
one  on  the  stack  who  was  "layin' 
headin\" 

[68] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

Here  I  secured  a  position  luckily, 
and  I  had  an  experience  at  "lay in' 
headin'  5 '  which  I  shall  never  forget, 
and  which  forms  as  integral  a  part  of 
my  mental  and  moral  training  as  any 
other  thing  I  ever  did  or  any  book  I 
ever  studied.  I  was  earning  "six  bits" 
or  seventy-five  cents  a  day,  more 
money  than  I  had  ever  received  stead- 
ily before  in  my  life.  When  an  older 
person  did  the  work  which  I  was  doing 
he  received  usually  one  dollar  a  day. 
But  I  was  a  boy  and  schoolboy  at  that, 
and  this  fact,  though  otherwise  and 
elsewhere  exemplary,  lowers  one's  price 
in  a  "stave  factory."  The  superin- 
tendent would  not  pay  a  schoolboy  one 
dollar  a  day,  and  I  doubt  whether  he 
would  have  hired  me  at  all  if  he  had 
not  supposed  that  like  almost  all  oth- 
ers I  would  never  return  to  school  after 
finding  a  position  that  paid  four  dol- 
lars and  fifty  cents  a  week,  for  I  re- 
[64] 


THE    STAVE    FACTORY 

member  how  he  swore  when  I  quit  at 
the  end  of  the  summer,  calling  me  a 
young  fool  for  throwing  away  the  op- 
portunity of  certain  employment  for 
the  doubtful  blessings  of  "schooling." 
And  the  fact  of  my  receiving  a  lower 
wage  brought  me  into  disfavor  with 
some  of  the  men  who  worked  about 
the  factory,  especially  with  the  man 
who  "pitched  headin'  "  to  me. 

This  man  was  at  one  and  the  same 
time,  about  as  merry  and  human  and 
as  cruel  and  brutal  a  fellow  as  my  brain 
has  ever  been  able  to  imagine.  And 
nothing  that  I  shall  record  here  has 
the  least  feeling  of  resentment  toward 
his  memory,  for  I  regard  him  as  one  of 
my  appointed  teachers  who,  whether 
he  willed  it  or  not,  gave  me  (somewhat 
against  my  will,  too)  a  most  valuable 
mental  and  moral  discipline.  If  I 
should  meet  him  today,  I  would  shake 

his  hand  heartily  as  one  of  my  benefac- 
5  [  65  1 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

tors,  albeit  he  tried  for  weeks  and 
weeks  to  knock  my  brains  out  with 
pieces  of  green  barrel  heading.  Usu- 
ally if  a  man  tries  constantly  to  hurt 
you  and  you  constantly  prevent  him, 
he  helps  you,  advances  you  in  the 
world,  the  damages  which  nature  as- 
sesses in  your  favor  for  the  unjust  at- 
tacks upon  your  life  and  character. 
This  man  was  hard  as  iron  in  face  and 
heart;  stout  as  an  ox  in  frame;  tire- 
less as  a  machine  in  action.  His  wick- 
edness was  simple,  straightforward; 
the  only  good  phase  of  his  character  was 
his  honest  disclaimer  of  all  goodness. 
He  could  preach  mock  sermons  as  he 
worked,  almost  word  for  word  and 
sound  for  sound  imitations  of  some  of 
the  noisier  preachers  of  the  town.  He 
would  sing  church  songs,  plantation 
songs,  ribald  songs,  keeping  time  to 
the  rhythm  of  his  iron  muscles  as  he 
sent  the  pieces  of  heading  shooting  into 
[66] 


THE   STAVE   FACTORY 

the  air.  When  his  jokes  were  not  coarse 
they  were  of  a  good  wit  and  lightened 
the  burdens  of  all  who  worked  near 
him. 

This  man  determined  to  stop  me 
from  working  at  that  factory  by  catch- 
ing me  off  my  guard  and  dealing  me  a 
terrible  blow  with  a  piece  of  that  head- 
ing under  the  excuse  of  pitching  it  in 
the  regular  way.  I  felt  his  determina- 
tion from  the  very  first  by  that  defen- 
sive telepathy  with  which  Nature  en- 
dues the  mind  of  hunted  animals  and 
especially  of  a  hunted  man.  I  was  on 
my  guard.  I  was  equally  determined 
to  defeat  him  without  ever  saying  a 
word  to  indicate  that  I  suspected  him. 
I  must  be  alert,  with  my  attention 
fixed  from  seven  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing till  noon,  and  in  the  afternoon  from 
one  o'clock  till  six.  For  a  long  time  he 
tried  to  wear  me  out  by  keeping  the 

pieces  of  heading  flying  at  me  in  such 
[67] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

rapid  succession  that  there  was  not  a 
moment  even  to  look  aside.  But  that 
plan  could  not  succeed,  for  my  work 
was  lighter  than  his  and  my  nerve  and 
muscles  were  good.  His  determina- 
tion grew  with  his  defeat.  He  next 
tried  the  scheme  of  pitching  with  gen- 
tle regularity  for  long  periods  of  time, 
then  suddenly  sending  up  two  or  more 
pieces  in  rapid  succession,  the  last 
coming  with  a  force  to  fell  an  ox.  But 
I  was  on  my  guard  and  both  pieces 
would  sometimes  be  deftly  caught  to 
show  my  skill  and  vex  the  tyrant;  or 
when  a  particularly  murderous  shot 
was  fired  I  might  incline  my  body  and 
let  it  pass  harmlessly  by  and  fall  to 
the  ground  many  yards  beyond  the 
stack.  At  such  times  he  would  swear 
roughly  and  say  that  he  was  not  to 
waste  his  time  pitching  heading  upon 
the  ground.  I  would  make  some  rea- 
sonable remark,  trying  never  to  show, 
[68] 


THE    STAVE    FACTORY 

or  rather  determined  never  to  ac- 
knowledge that  I  understood  his  aim. 
He  knew  well  that  I  understood.  I 
have  known  him  to  walk  away  out  of 
sight  and  slip  back  from  another  di- 
rection, without  my  notice,  as  he 
thought,  and  send  a  piece  of  heavy 
heading  hissing  through  the  air.  It 
was  always  either  caught  or  allowed 
to  pass  harmlessly  by.  I  have  known 
him  to  purchase  a  water-melon  from 
a  passing  wagon,  burst  it  and  appar- 
ently sit  down  to  eat  it,  when  sud- 
denly, towards  the  top  of  the  stack  on 
which  I  stood,  several  pieces  of  head- 
ing would  be  traveling  in  swift  and 
dangerous  succession.  Not  once  did 
he  catch  me  off  my  guard.  I  over- 
heard him  remark  to  another  man  that 
I  was  as  hard  to  hit  as  a  squirrel. 

Ill  success  never  discouraged  him; 
he  was  as  persevering  as  the  devil.    All 

summer  he  kept  up  his  attack;    all 
[691 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

summer  I  kept  up  my  defense.  If  I 
experienced  any  feeling  like  hatred  in 
the  beginning,  it  was  very  soon  all 
lost,  and  I  came  to  look  upon  the  daily 
action  as  a  contest  in  which  it  was  "up 
to  me"  to  win. 

In  September,  I  returned  to  school 
and  the  superintendent  swore.  My 
friend  of  the  summer's  battle  dealt 
gently  with  me  in  the  last  week  or  so; 
perhaps  with  honest  intentions,  but 
without  inducing  me  to  take  down  my 
defenses.  I  came  away  with  no  scar 
or  mark,  save  the  blackness  of  my 
palms,  which  the  green-oak  sap  had 
rendered  blacker  than  the  backs  of  my 
hands. 

During  the  following  school  season 

I  helped  myself  by  doing  odd  jobs  on 

Saturdays  and  by  running  errands  and 

cutting  wood  out  of  school  hours.     I 

learned  my  lessons  while  going  errands 

or  chopping  wood.     Many  people  can 
[70] 


THE    STAVE    FACTORY 

remember  seeing  me  go  along  the  pub- 
lic streets  with  a  book  open  before  my 
face.  On  a  long  errand  I  might  com- 
mit a  whole  history  lesson  to  memory. 
When  I  was  cutting  wood  I  opened  my 
book  and  propped  it  against  a  piece  of 
wood  at  a  convenient  distance,  with  a 
chip  holding  the  leaves  apart,  and 
studied  by  glances  as  I  swung  the  ax. 
Later  in  the  year  I  found  another 
means  of  help.  My  father  was  fireman 
for  a  sawmill  and  secured  for  me  the 
privilege  of  employing  some  of  my 
Saturdays  on  the  lumber  yards.  I  was 
later  given  the  position  also  of  "Sun- 
day watchman"  for  these  mill-yards. 
This  kept  me  absolutely  away  from 
Sunday  school  and  away  from  the  day 
services  of  the  church,  but  such  things 
I  always  accepted  as  temporary  means 
to  an  end.  All  day  Sunday  I  camped 
alone  but  with  my  books.  If  it  was 
cold  I  made  a  fire  in  the  mill  office  and 
.     [71] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

read,  and  wrote  poems,  sometimes 
satires  on  the  members  of  some  class 
of  the  High  School  with  which  my  class 
was  for  the  moment  at  war.  If  the 
weather  was  mild  I  studied  or  read  out 
on  the  lumber  piles.  I  early  acquired 
the  habit  of  getting  weeks  and  some- 
times months  ahead  of  my  class  in  the 
text-books.  If  a  subject  was  to  last 
all  the  year,  I  usually  finished  it  in 
March.  When  I  again  went  over  the 
work  with  the  class  I  enjoyed  the  pecul- 
iar profit  which  comes  from  review. 

During  the  summer  of  1898,  pre- 
paratory to  my  senior  year  in  the  High 
School,  I  worked  as  janitor  in  Keys's 
Business  College  for  white  boys.  I 
used  to  go  early  to  my  work  in  order  to 
study  the  various  books,  practice  on 
the  typewriting  machines  and  learn  the 
use  of  certain  athletic  tools.  Under 
such    circumstances    the   presumption 

always  lies  that  the  janitor  is  ignorant; 
[72] 


THE    STAVE    FACTORY 

but  when  the  boys  found  out  that  I 
could  do  their  lessons  for  them  and  out- 
do their  feats  on  the  punching  bag  and 
the  horizontal  bar,  some  of  them  grew 
cold  and  distant  and  others  enjoyed  the 
exhibitions  of  my  intelligence  much 
as  one  might  enjoy  the  cleverness  of  a 
Simian  in  the  Bronx  Park. 

My  senior  year  went  on  as  the  others 
had  gone.  A  reporter  for  one  of  the 
daily  papers  visited  the  school  that 
year  and  found  us  reading  Vergil's 
"iEneid."  The  teacher  had  me  scan 
or  read  metrically,  and  the  next  day 
there  appeared  in  that  newspaper  a 
statement  that  the  reporter  found  a 
negro  boy  that  possessed  the  language 
of  the  Romans  although  he  had  the 
color  of  Erebus.  In  that  same  year 
also  a  prominent  lawyer  who  held  the 
office,  I  think,  of  attorney-general  of  the 
state  visited  the  school  and  saw  and 

heard  some  performances  in  mathemat- 
[73] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

ics  and  Latin,  and  kindly  invited  me 
down  to  his  office  to  help  him  convince 
his  law  partner  that  a  negro  could  learn 
Latin.  I  went  on  my  missionary  journey. 
After  quite  an  extended  hearing  from 
various  parts  of  Cicero  and  Vergil  and  a 
theoretical  discussion  between  the  two 
lawyers  about  the  relative  value  of 
"rote-learning,"  the  partner  in  ques- 
tion acknowledged  that  he  was  con- 
vinced— always  addressing  the  other 
lawyer,  and  never  addressing  or  no- 
ticing me  any  more  than  one  would 
address  the  machine  whose  qualities 
and  capacities  were  the  subject  of  dis- 
cussion. He  finally  said  that  I  might 
profit  somewhat  by  a  college  education 
— and  by  his  partner  I  was  thanked  and 
dismissed.  It  reminds  me  of  certain 
great  educational  gatherings  to  discuss 
the  education  of  the  negro,  where  the 
negro  is  conspicuous  by  his  enforced 
absence. 

[74] 


THE    STAVE   FACTORY 

In  June  of  1899  I  was  graduated  as 
the  valedictorian  of  my  class.  This 
valedictory  was  the  first  original  ad- 
dress I  had  ever  made;  it  was  forty 
minutes  long.  And  although  that 
speech  was  the  "apple  of  mine  eye" 
then,  when  I  think  of  it  now  it  seems 
strange  to  me  that  I  should  ever  have 
been  allowed  to  pour  forth  in  that  park 
such  a  tropical  effusion  in  the  presence 
of  the  school  board  and  the  assembled 
multitude. 

This  first  graduation,  where  most  men 
stop,  filled  me  with  the  greatest  desire 
I  have  ever  experienced  for  further 
education.  How  that  mountain  of  diffi- 
culty was  climbed  shall  be  related  now. 
The  summer  immediately  following  my 
High  School  graduation  wrote  into  the 
story  of  my  life  another  of  those  delicious 
chapters  of  hard  and  profitable  experi- 
ence to  which  I  turn  and  read  whenever 

I  am  tempted  by  discouragement. 
[75] 


VI 
"YOU  CAN  HAVE  HOPE" 


VI 

"YOU  CAN  HAVE  HOPE" 

rpHIS  was  a  truly  critical  time  in  my 
career.  I  knew  that  I  was  not 
even  half  educated.  I  desired  to  go  to 
college — but  how?  I  thought  I  should 
have  to  work  for  several  years 
and  save  the  money.  But  I  knew 
that  it  is  not  well  to  interrupt  one's 
education;  a  thing  that  is  well  started 
goes  more  easily  if  it  is  not  allowed  to 
stop.  But  necessity  is  necessity,  and  I 
had  become  used  to  stooping  to  con- 
quer before  her  iron  rod.  So  I  took  the 
state  teacher's  examination  and  secured 
a  "first  grade"  license.  I  could  have 
earned  forty  or  fifty  dollars  a  month 
at  teaching. 
I  knew  that  most  young  men  of  my 

acquaintance   when   they   could   earn 
[79] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

fifty  dollars  a  month  felt  no  further 
need  of  school.  But  I  did  not  fear 
that  such  a  feeling  would  ever  take 
possession  of  me.  I  had  come  to  have 
a  stout  faith;  whatever  difficulty  I  met, 
I  believed  that  in  some  way  I  could 
get  over  it.  If  faith  ever  becomes  dan- 
gerous, mine  had  perhaps  reached  that 
dangerous  point  where  I  felt  too  liter- 
ally sure  that  "I  cannot  fail  if  I  try." 
I  had  kept  at  school  for  the  eight  years 
past  because  I  felt  sure  that  I  could  do 
so.  I  had  never  failed  to  solve  a  prob- 
lem in  all  of  my  lessons,  and  I  had  never 
tackled  one  with  the  feeling  that  I 
should  fail.  Always  starting  out  penni- 
less and  ever  with  some  new  difficulty 
in  my  path,  I  had  earned  pennies  and 
pushed  my  way  through  school  from 
year  to  year  since  my  mother  died. 
I  had  overcome  many  difficulties,  never 
doubting  that  I  should  overcome. 

At  this  time  I  picked  up  a  dusty, 
[80] 


"YOU   CAN   HAVE   HOPE" 

worn  book  that  had  come  into  our 
family  by  some  accident  and  had  lain 
unopened  for  years,  I  read  in  it  a  story 
which  filled  me  with  the  feeling  that 
mere  empty  "faith"  that  is  unaccom- 
panied by  constant  andfaithful  "works" 
is  a  comical  and  a  ludicrous  phantom. 
The  story  ran  that  a  British  scholar 
named  Moore  believed  in  the  doctrine 
of  transubstantiation,  that  if  one  believes 
it,  the  bread  of  the  sacrament  becomes 
the  actual  body  and  the  wine  the  actual 
blood  of  Christ.  Erasmus  did  not 
believe  that  doctrine,  and  so  journeyed 
to  England  to  have  a  friendly  discus- 
sion with  Moore.  They  met  at  table 
without  being  introduced,  neither 
knowing  who  the  other  was.  In  that 
day  scholars  of  different  nationalities 
made  Latin  their  international  lan- 
guage. A  discussion  began  on  the  topic 
of     transubstantiation.     Moore,     not 

knowing  with  whom  he  was  arguing, 
6  [81] 


THE    HEIR    OF   SLAVES 

stood  up  for  the  faith;  Erasmus,  not 
knowing  whom  he  was  opposing,  said 
that  he  did  not  believe  that  faith  could 
transubstantiate  matter.  Erasmus  dis- 
covered his  opponent  through  his  argu- 
ment and  cried  out:  "Aut  tu  Morus  es, 
aut  nullus!"  (Either  you  are  Moore, 
or  nobody.)  And  Moore  with  ready 
wit  replied:  "Aut  tu  es  Erasmus,  aut 
diabolus!"  (Either  you  are  Erasmus 
or  the  devil.)  Then  Moore  claimed 
that  the  doctrine  was  true  for  those 
who  believed  it,  and  that  the  act  of  faith 
made  the  fact.  And  Erasmus,  outdone 
in  argument,  decided  not  to  be  outdone 
in  demonstration,  and  when  he  was 
returning  to  the  continent,  he  asked 
Moore  to  lend  him  his  horse,  saying 
simply  that  Moore  would  surely  get 
his  horse  back.  But  when  he  reached 
his  home  in  Europe,  instead  of  sending 
back  the  horse,  he  sent  to  Moore  the 

two  following  stanzas: 
[82] 


"YOU   CAN   HAVE   HOPE" 

"Quod  mini  dixisti 
De  corpore  Christi: 

'Crede  quod  edas  et  dis' — 
Sic  tibi  rescribo 
De  tuo  palfrido: 

Crede  quod  habeas  et  habes. 

And  although  I  have  seen  neither  the 
book  nor  the  story  since,  I  remember 
that  I  made  the  following  mental  ren- 
dition of  those  stanzas  into  English: 

"What  you  to  me  have  said 
About  the  sacred  bread: 

'Believe  it's  Christ's  body  and  it's  that' — 
So  I  write  back  to  you 
About  your  palfrey  too: 

Believe  that  you  have  it  and  hav't.' 

The  story  impressed  me:  how  was  a 
fellow  to  get  his  horse  or  win  his  spurs 
through  mere  faith  without  acts?  I 
inquired  of  my  friends  if  it  were  not 
possible  for  one  to  work  his  way  in  col- 
lege. The  pastor  of  the  First  Congre- 
gational   Church    of   Little    Rock,    a 

graduate  of  Talladega  College  in  Ala- 
[831 


THE   HEIROF    SLAVES 

bama,  offered  to  write  an  intercessory 
letter  to  that  institution  if  I  could 
permit  him  to  say  how  much  I  should 
be  able  to  pay  toward  my  college  ex- 
penses in  cash — and  that  was  the  "rub." 
But  I  told  him  to  write  for  conditions 
and  that  I  would  set  to  work  to  earn 
the  required  cash.  He  gave  me  the 
address  of  the  president  of  the  school 
and  I  also  wrote  a  frank  letter.  It  was 
now  July  and  I  could  wait  for  a  reply; 
I  must  set  to  work  in  the  hope  of  earn- 
ing an  acceptable  amount  of  cash.  I 
entered  again  upon  one  of  those  life 
experiences  which  are  hard  enough  in 
their  passage,  but  which  in  their  recol- 
lection verify  the  truth  of  Vergil's 
line,  that  "perchance  some  day  it  will 
be  pleasant  to  remember  even  these 
things." 

The    new    railroad,    then    popularly 
known  as  the  "Choctaw,"  was  being 

built  through  the  wilderness  of  Arkan- 

[84] 


"YOU   CAN   HAVE   HOPE" 

sas,  through  sections  where  neither 
railroads  nor  other  enginery  of  civiliza- 
tion had  ever  gone  before.  My  father 
was  at  work  on  the  line  forty  miles 
up  the  Arkansas  River,  in  a  tangled 
jungle  only  accessible  to  river  boats. 
Concrete  bridges  were  being  built  over 
the  streams  and  gorges,  and  cuts  were 
being  blasted  through  the  hills.  It  was 
rough  work  that  only  the  hardiest  men 
could  stand.  There  is  always  a  chance 
to  secure  a  position  in  such  work;  it  is 
so  hard  that  vacancies  are  constantly 
occurring,  but  the  summer  was  wear- 
ing away  and  I  must  hurry.  I  wrote 
my  father  that  I  was  coming,  and  did 
not  wait  for  his  reply,  for  I  knew  he 
would  think  it  impossible  for  me  to  do 
the  work. 

After  journeying  a  day  and  a  night, 
working  my  way  on  a  river  steamer 
among  the  "roustabouts,"  I  reached 

the   frontier-like   scene   of   a   railroad 
[851 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

camp.  The  bulk  of  the  laborers  and 
camp-followers  were  of  the  scum  of 
humanity,  white  and  black;  there  were 
rough,  coarse  men  and  undesirable 
women.  My  father  tried  to  act  the 
presumption  that  I  had  come  to  visit 
him;  he  studiedly  said  nothing  to  me 
to  imply  that  he  had  any  idea  of  my 
attempting  that  work.  I  coolly  told 
him  of  my  prospects  for  going  to  col- 
lege, and  that  I  had  come  to  work.  I 
shall  never  forget  the  wistful,  anxious, 
half -sad  look  of  his  eyes  as  I  took  up  my 
spade  and  wheelbarrow  and  went  "on 
the  grade"  among  the  men.  There 
were  shoveling  and  wheeling  of  dirt 
and  crushed  stone.  Concrete  mixing 
machines  were  not  then  in  use,  and  the 
mixing  had  to  be  done  by  the  men  with 
shovels — the  heaviest,  hardest  work 
imaginable.  On  my  first  day  at  con- 
crete-mixing   the    men    laughed    and 

swore  that  I  could  not  last  till  noon, 
[86] 


"YOU   CAN   HAVE   HOPE" 

but  would  "white-eye."  That  term 
was  applied  to  the  actions  of  the  sufferer 
because  his  eyeballs  rolled  in  a  peculiar 
manner,  showing  the  white,  when  he 
became  overheated  and  fell  upon  the 
ground.  I  did  last  till  noon;  and  then 
the  foreman,  a  stocky  German  of  the 
coarsest  possible  nature,  who  had  kept 
a  half  amused  eye  on  me  all  the  morn- 
ing, expecting  to  have  some  fun  when  I 
should  "white-eye,"  was  so  touched 
by  the  determination  with  which  I 
stuck  till  noon  that  he  gave  me  lighter 
work.  At  nights  I  had  only  vitality 
enough  left  to  bathe  in  the  green  waters 
of  the  bayou  and  lie  down  to  rest  in  my 
tent.  On  Sundays  I  read  two  borrowed 
books,  one  of  them  being  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin."  Most  of  the  men  gambled 
all  day  Sundays  and  caroused  till  late 
at  night.  My  better  habits  soon  gave 
me   superior   strength   and  endurance 

and  I  could  tire  the  toughest  rival. 
[87] 


THE   HEIR   OF    SLAVES 

This  seemed  wonderful  to  the  men. 
They  seemed  to  think  that  I  was  a 
strange  fellow.  They  did  not  reckon  on 
the  habits  of  life. 

For  about  a  month  I  had  received 
no  word  from  the  president  of  Talla- 
dega College  as  to  whether  my  appli- 
cation could  be  accepted,  when  one 
day  there  came  in  the  steamboat  mail 
a  card,  bearing  the  Ohio  postmark  and 
signed  "G.  W.  Andrews": 

"Your  frank  and  interesting  letter 
has  been  received.  I  cannot  say  defi- 
nitely now,  but  write  to  say  you  can 
have  hope." 

"  You  can  have  hope."  That  was 
after  all  a  great  message  at  the  right 
time  and  place.  It  seemed  to  antici- 
pate a  more  definite  reply.  I  worked 
all  summer  on  that  card  of  "hope." 
Not  another  word  ever  came.  In  the 
multitude  of  the  president's  duties,  and 
perhaps  of  similar  applications,  my 
[88] 


"YOU    CAN   HAVE   HOPE" 

case  had  doubtless  slipped  from  his 
memory  and  notes.  But  I  hoped  and 
worked,  and  worked  and  hoped.  Sep- 
tember came  and  wore  away  towards 
October.  No  word.  But  there  was 
"hope."  I  had  heard  that  Talladega 
College  was  to  open  on  the  first  Tues- 
day of  October. 

Meanwhile  my  evident  intelligence 
had  won  for  me  a  little  better  position 
from  the  good-natured,  coarse-spoken 
German,  and  for  my  last  month  I  was 
put  to  assist  the  cook  and  keeper  of  the 
commissary  boat.  My  father  had  re- 
turned to  the  city  to  engage  in  other 
work.  I  did  not  tell  the  foreman  that 
I  was  going  to  quit  and  go  to  school. 
I  knew  better,  most  of  my  pay  was  still 
due  and  it  would  have  been  all  kept 
and  I  myself  kept  for  a  period.  There 
was  no  law  in  that  wilderness  but  the 

law  of  the  jungle.    I  had  seen  the  fore- 
[89] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

man  chasing  white  men  with  a  revol- 
ver, as  one  might  chase  rabbits. 

On  the  Saturday  before  the  first  Tues- 
day in  October  I  drew  all  my  pay  and 
got  excused  to  go  to  the  city,  as  the  men 
sometimes  did.  The  steamer  was  not 
in,  so  I  had  to  cross  the  river  and  walk 
fifteen  or  twenty  miles  to  the  nearest 
railroad  station.  I  left  at  daylight  and 
caught  the  train  at  noon. 

It  was  an  uncivilized  world  from 
which  I  had  escaped,  the  only  appear- 
ance of  civilization  being  from  its 
uglier  phase,  leased  convicts  with  their 
"coon-tail"  stripes  on  a  farm  in  a  lone 
valley  half  a  dozen  miles  from  the  rail- 
road camps.  As  one  journeyed  through 
the  woods  he  would  occasionally  come 
upon  a  path  which  would  lead  to  the 
hut  of  poor  white  people;  they  usually 
had  no  floor  or  chairs  and  slept  on  rude 
"bunks"  or  on  quilts  upon  the  bare 

ground.    It  has  always  appealed  more 
[90] 


"YOU    CAN   HAVE   HOPE" 

powerfully  to  my  sympathies  to  behold 
poor,  degraded  white  people  than  to 
behold  the  same  class  of  my  own  race. 
I  suppose  it  is  because  the  degraded 
white  man  is  such  a  contrast  to  the 
opportunities  and  attainments  of  his 
race,  so  that  his  position  seems  to  be 
a  real  cfe-gradation,  and  it  is  a  less  sad 
spectacle  to  see  a  man  simply  down  than 
to  see  a  man  downed. 

On  Sunday  I  went  to  see  the  Con- 
gregational preacher,  told  him  of  the 
card  of  "hope,"  and  that  I  had  had  no 
further  word.  He  concluded  that  the 
president  had  overlooked  me,  but  said 
that  he  had  heard  that  if  a  worthy 
student  could  deposit  thirty  or  forty 
dollars  with  the  treasurer  he  might 
be  given  sufficient  work  to  meet  the 
rest  of  his  bills  for  the  year.  Examin- 
ing my  accounts  I  found  that  I  had  to 
my  credit  about  fifty  dollars;  my  fare 

from  Little  Rock,  Ark.,  to  Talladega, 
[91] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

Ala.,  would  be  about  fifteen  dollars; 
so  that  I  could  spend  five  dollars  for 
some  necessary  articles  and  go  with 
the  minimum  of  thirty  dollars. 

I  went.  I  was  actuated  by  faith  and 
the  "hope."  It  was  something  of  a 
venture  for  a  boy  of  eighteen,  who  had 
never  before  left  the  neighborhood  of 
home  and  home-folk.  But  how  was 
one  to  get  his  horse  unless  to  faith 
he  should  add  deeds? 


[92] 


VII 
A  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONARY  COLLEGE 


VII 
A  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONARY  COLLEGE. 

T  REACHED  Talladega  at  night  and 
went  early  the  next  morning  to 
the  home  of  the  college  president,  to 
try  my  fate  again  as  I  had  tried  it  three 
years  before  with  the  high  school 
authorities  in  Little  Rock.  He  had  for- 
gotten me,  but  remembered  when  I 
mentioned  the  "card  of  hope."  With 
the  coolness  and  slowness  of  one  who 
has  prepared  to  look  fate  in  the  face 
I  said:  "Not  hearing  any  more  from 
you  I  decided  to  come  and  see.  And" 
— drawing  something  slowly  from  my 
pocket —  "and  I  have  here  three  ten 
dollar  bills."  I  noticed  the  change  in 
the  good  man's  countenance  between 
the  words  three  and  ten;  too  often  had 
he  faced  the  difficulty  of  finding  a  way 

for  apparently  worthy   students   who 
[95] 


THE   HEIROF    SLAVES 

brought  less  than  a  tenth  part  of  their 
year's  expenses.  When  he  learned  that 
I  had  come  five  hundred  miles  on  faith, 
the  smile  that  lit  his  countenance  was 
auspicious.  My  star  of  "hope"  had 
not  misled  me.  He  said  that  he  would 
give  the  thirty  dollars  to  the  treasurer, 
and  asked  if  I  could  hitch  a  horse,  milk  a 
cow  and  work  a  garden.  I  replied  that 
I  could  learn  to  do  any  kind  of  work. 

My  faith  and  adventure  evidently 
made  a  great  impression  on  this  man. 
In  his  chapel  talk  that  morning,  with- 
out calling  names  or  making  indica- 
tions, he  told  a  story  to  the  assembled 
students,  how  a  young  man  had  written 
from  a  distant  state;  how  the  corre- 
spondence had  been  lost  and  forgotten; 
how  the  fellow  had  based  his  hope  on 
a  rather  indefinite  proposition,  had 
worked  hard  all  summer  to  earn  a  few 
dollars,   had   come    many    miles.     He 

described  the  coolness  with  which  this 
[96] 


MISSIONARY   COLLEGE 

young  man  had  faced  him  and  his  own 
shifting  emotions  between  the  words 
"three"  and  "ten." 

I  had  not  seen  a  school  test  all  sum- 
mer, and  in  my  entrance  examinations 
I  learned  what  an  excellent  prepara- 
tion it  is  not  to  prepare  for  an  examina- 
tion, but  to  learn  each  daily  lesson 
and  then  take  a  period  of  rest  and  not 
of  cramming  just  before  the  test.  And 
for  the  remainder  of  my  school  life  I 
prepared  for  the  examination  of  tomor- 
row by  retiring  at  eight  or  nine  o'clock 
the  night  before. 

First  the  Latin  teacher  started  in  to 
test  me  in  Cicero,  which  I  read  so 
easily  that  he  closed  it  and  opened  Ver- 
gil's "iEneid,"  asking  me  to  scan  and 
read.  I  announced  that  I  could  read 
the  first  six  books,  and  he  turned  from 
book  to  book,  forwards  and  backwards, 
but  I  always  "scanned  and  read."     I 

was  then  passed  on  to  the  teacher  of 
7  [971 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

mathematics.  Many  white  people  have 
an  honest  opinion  that  the  negro  mind 
is  characteristically  unmathematical. 
The  teacher  asked  me  to  draw  the 
figure  and  demonstrate  the  proposition 
that  the  sum  of  three  angles  of  a  tri- 
angle is  equal  to  two  right  angles.  He 
added  that  he  would  go  about  some 
desk  work  and  that  I  might  call  his 
attention  when  I  was  ready.  As  a 
good-natured  resentment  to  this  last 
statement  I  called  his  attention  at  once, 
drawing  the  figure  "free-hand"  as  I  did 
so,  and  announced  that  I  was  "ready." 
It  is  a  simple  and  easy  proposition,  and 
it  was  so  clearly  demonstrated  that  this 
teacher,  who  was  the  college  dean,  gave 
me  no  further  examinations  and  en- 
rolled me  in  the  sophomore  class.  So 
I  never  was  a  freshman. 

I  noticed  that  I  was  not  put  to  milk- 
ing cows  and  hitching  teams,  willing 

as  I  was,  but  was  given  work  in  the  col- 
[98J 


MISSIONARY   COLLEGE 

lege  library.  In  the  first  of  January 
came  the  annual  week  "of  prayer," 
and  I  joined  the  little  Congregational 
church  which  is  fostered  in  connection 
with  the  college.  I  was  just  about 
nineteen  years  old.  Why  had  I  not 
become  a  church  member  before  this 
time?  That  is  a  thing  worth  explain- 
ing in  the  interest  of  the  younger  gen- 
eration of  negroes.  I  believed  in  God 
and  the  church,  and  had  always  been 
a  most  faithful  worshiper,  but  I  could 
not  dream  dreams  and  see  visions. 
Without  dreams  and  visions  no  one 
was  allowed  to  join  the  average  negro 
church  of  the  past.  The  cause  that 
produced  many  of  the  negro  songs  was 
the  fact  that  the  candidate  was  re- 
quired to  bring  and  sing  a  "new  song" 
to  prove  that  he  was  really  converted 
by  God,  for  the  doctrine  was  that  "the 
devil  can  convert  you,  but  he  can't 
give  you  a  new  song."  Rather  sug- 
[W] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

gestive,  this  idea  of  the  unpoeticalness 
of  the  devil.  It  would  amuse  more 
than  it  would  instruct  for  me  to  relate 
some  of  the  ridiculous  stories  which  I 
have  heard  accepted  in  church  as  con- 
vert's "experiences."  At  last  I  had 
found  a  church  which  did  not  require 
that  I  visit  hell,  like  Dante,  in  a  dream, 
to  be  chased  by  the  hounds  of  the  devil 
and  make  a  narrow,  hair-raising  escape. 
And  I  have  been  a  member  of  this 
church  since  my  first  college  year. 

Talladega  College  is  a  typical  mon- 
ument of  unselfishness.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  annals  of  human  history 
that  outrivals  the  unselfishness  that 
founded  and  has  maintained  these 
institutions  for  half  a  century.  When 
the  institution  was  founded  in  1867 
practically  the  whole  negro  population 
was  illiterate  and  penniless.  It  is  on 
record  that  many  workers  gave  their 

services    absolutely   free.    The   senti- 
[100] 


MISSIONARY   COLLEGE 

mentof  the  South  was  naturally  opposed 
to  negro  education,  especially  at  the 
hands  of  its  late  enemies.  The  early 
workers  had  to  face  something  more 
than  mere  social  ostracism:  the  Ku 
Klux  Klan  did  not  stop  with  that  bar- 
barity of  civilization,  but  often  adopted 
real  barbarities,  terrifying,  banishing, 
whipping  and  killing.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  what  an  evolutionary  influence 
a  school  like  Talladega  has  on  the  senti- 
ment of  its  neighborhood;  white  people 
of  the  town  are  now  among  its  chief 
defenders  whenever  danger  is  threat- 
ened, and  are  among  its  best  donors 
when  a  new  building  is  to  be  erected. 
And  oh,  the  devolvements  of  Father 
Time!  The  building  which  has  been 
the  main  educational  hall  of  the  insti- 
tution for  forty  years,  was  erected  by 
slave  labor  in  1852-53  as  a  college  for 
white  boys.     One  of  the  slaves  who 

toiled  at  the  work  has  since  had  his 
[1011 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

many  children  and  grandchildren  edu- 
cated in  it. 

In  my  first  winter  at  Talladega  I  won 
the  college  oratorical  contest  and  sev- 
eral other  literary  prizes.  This  sug- 
gested to  the  president  and  faculty  the 
idea  of  sending  me  to  the  North  in  the 
following  summer  with  a  party  of  four 
other  students  and  a  teacher  on  a  cam- 
paign in  the  financial  interest  of  the 
college.  The  teacher,  who  has  since 
become  President  Metcalf,  presented 
the  work,  the  aims  and  the  needs  of 
the  institution,  the  quartet  of  boys 
sang  and  I  delivered  an  address  which 
I  prepared  especially  for  the  campaign. 
That  speech  and  that  campaign  proved 
to  be  the  doorway  of  my  future,  as  will 
appear. 

It  was  in  the  summer  of  1900,  and 
it  was  my  first  time  north  of  the  Ohio 
and  the  Potomac.  We  went  north- 
ward in  the  month  of  June  through 
[  102  ] 


MISSIONARY  COLLEGE 

Tennessee  and  Kentucky  into  Ohio, 
thence  eastward,  visiting  Niagara  and 
the  summer  haunts  of  the  rich  in  the 
Adirondacks  and  concluding  our  cam- 
paign in  the  New  England  States  in 
September. 

It  was  Commencement  time  when 
we  reached  Oberlin,  and  the  class  of 
1875  was  celebrating  its  twenty-fifth 
anniversary.  Professor  Scarborough 
of  Wilberforce  University,  the  negro 
scholar  who  is  a  member  of  this  class, 
was  present  at  an  impromptu  parlor 
entertainment  by  the  five  boys  of  our 
party,  and  he  so  much  liked  a  recita- 
tion which  I  combined  from  Spartacus 
to  the  Gladiators  and  The  Christian 
Gladiator  that  when  we  parted  he  gave 
me  in  the  act  of  handshaking  a  silver 
half  dollar.  I  noticed  what  he  did  not 
notice,  that  the  coin  bore  the  date  of 

"1875,"  the  year  of  his  class — and  I 
[103] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

have  it  now,  black  with  age  and  non- 
use  in  my  purse. 

At  Akron,  0.,  an  event  happened  on 
which  hangs  a  chain  of  circumstances; 
the  people  requested  that  my  speech 
be  printed  in  pamphlets  so  that  copies 
could  be  purchased.  Copies  were  sent 
to  Dr.  G.  W.  Andrews,  the  head  of 
Talladega  College,  the  author  of  my 
"card  of  hope."  He  marked  a  copy 
and  sent  it  to  Dr.  A.  F.  Beard,  the  sen- 
ior secretary  of  the  American  Mission- 
ary Association. 

This  trip  impressed  me  with  the 
unselfish  spirit  of  the  Christian  people 
of  the  North — and  also  showed  me 
that  the  good  people  of  the  North  had 
a  very  inadequate  idea  of  the  real  ca- 
pacity of  the  American  negro.  When 
we  visited  the  summer  camp  of  Mr. 
Harrison,  ex-president  of  the  United 
States,  members  of  his  party  expressed 

frank  surprise  that  a  party  of  negro 
[104] 


MISSIONARY   COLLEGE 

college  students  could  sing  and  speak 
and  deport  themselves  so  well — and  I 
myself  was  scrutinized  with  a  most 
uncomforting  curiosity. 

Our  little  campaign  paid  expenses 
and  brought  back  a  thousand  dollars 
for  the  college — a  small  sum  of  money 
but  a  big  experience.  Moreover  I 
had  seen  Yale,  had  actually  looked 
upon  its  elms,  its  ivies  and  its  outer 
walls.  From  that  day  the  audacious 
idea  began  to  take  me  that  I  must  push 
my  educational  battles  into  its  gates. 


[105] 


VIII 
PREPARING  FOR  YALE  IN  IRONWORK 


VIII 
PREPARING  FOR  YALE  IN  IRONWORK 

\\  THEN  we  reached  Talladega  after 
our  summer  campaign  of  1900 
I  received  what  was  then  the  greatest 
surprise  of  my  life,  an  invitation  to 
speak  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the 
American  Missionary  Association  to 
be  held  in  Springfield,  Mass.,  in  Octo- 
ber. Doctor  Beard  had  read  my  sum- 
mer campaign  speech,  and  I  was  asked 
to  come  more  than  a  thousand  miles  to 
speak  for  ten  minutes.  This  invita- 
tion gave  me  my  first  direct  impression 
of  the  lofty  Christian  spirit  of  the  great 
organization  of  whose  educational  work 
I  was  a  beneficiary.  I  was  a  boy  of 
nineteen  years,  an  almost  unknown 
student,  and  in  a  position  to  be  com- 
manded.    On  my  way  to  Springfield 

I  met  for  the  first  time  Dr.  Booker  T. 
[109] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

Washington,  who  was  likewise  invited 
to  speak  at  the  annual  meeting.  And 
although  the  incident  has  probably 
never  recurred  to  the  mind  of  that  hon- 
orable gentleman,  I  remember  that 
when  he  learned  my  mission  he  shared 
with  me  his  space  in  the  Pullman  car 
and  treated  me  with  such  kindly  con- 
sideration that  I  was  asked  by  passen- 
gers if  I  was  not  Mr.  Washington's  son. 

At  the  Springfield  Meeting 

The  Court  Square  Theater  waspacked, 
and  there  was  an  overflow  meeting  in 
the  church  across  the  street.  My 
speech  was  lengthened  from  ten  to 
about  twenty  minutes  at  the  suggestion 
of  officials  who  sat  upon  the  platform, 
the  suggestion  being  made  while  I 
spoke.  When  I  crossed  the  street  to 
speak  at  the  overflow  meeting,  Doctor 
Boynton,  who  presided,  said,  "If  they 
do  this  in  the  green  tree,  what  will  they 
[110] 


PREPARING   FOR  YALE 

do  in  the  dry?"  The  subject  of  this 
"green  tree"  discourse  was  character- 
istic of  a  boy  under  twenty  who  had 
just  escaped  from  the  sophomore  class, 
Negro  Evolution.  But  the  matter  was 
more  practical  than  the  title.  And  al- 
though I  have  since  enjoyed  the  enthusi- 
asm of  many  occasions  where  the 
speaker  and  his  audience  become  one- 
hearted  and  one-souled,  I  have  never 
had  a  more  thrilling  experience  or  a 
more  appreciative  audience  than  the 
one  in  the  Court  Square  Theater.  Yet 
I  had  heard  that  Northern  audiences 
were  cold. 

The  summer  of  1901  gave  me  an 
opportunity  to  learn  more  of  real  Black 
Belt  conditions.  I  assisted  in  the  sum- 
mer school  work  of  a  Talladega  College 
graduate  who  founded  an  institution  in 
a  rural  community  more  than  ten  miles 
from    the    nearest    railroad    station. 

There  the  negro  population  greatly  pre- 
[111] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

ponderates;  the  negro  owns  much  of 
the  land;  and  next  to  nothing  is  done 
by  the  authorities  of  the  state  for  pub- 
lic instruction.  I  was  impressed  by 
the  humanity,  the  simplicity  and  the 
universal  peaceableness  of  American 
black  folk  where  they  are  left  practi- 
cally to  themselves. 

I  finished  at  Talladega  College  in 
1902.  The  old  problem  of  further  edu- 
cation returned.  I  refused  a  position 
in  our  High  School  at  Little  Rock  be- 
cause I  wanted  to  go  to  Yale  or  Har- 
vard. Doctor  Andrews,  who  seemed  to 
have  a  perfect  confidence  in  my  future, 
was  trying  to  get  some  person  of  means 
to  assist  me  at  Yale.  Dean  Henry  P. 
Wright  of  Yale,  after  reading  the  recom- 
mendations of  my  former  teachers, 
had  written  that  I  could  enter  the 
junior  class.  This  great  scholar  and 
good  man  has  been  a  constant  friend 

since  that  first  acquaintance. 
[112] 


PREPARING   FOR   YALE 

As  in  former  days,  I  determined  to 
help  myself  by  some  decisive  move. 
Having  relatives  in  Chicago,  I  thought 
that  I  might  secure  work  in  a  great 
city  like  that;  and  going  thither  im- 
mediately after  my  graduation  I  luck- 
ily found  an  opening  in  Gates's  Iron- 
works on  the  north  side  of  the  city 
among  Poles  and  other  foreigners.  I 
was  a  "helper,"  supposed  to  assist  the 
workmen  wherever  my  services  were 
needed.  I  was  an  apparently  unwel- 
come object  to  the  Poles  until  they 
found  out  that  I  could  speak  German 
with  them.  These  members  of  the 
Catholic  faith  were  much  entertained 
and  amused  at  my  repetitions  of  German 
and  mediaeval  Latin  poems  to  the 
swinging  of  my  iron  sledge.  They 
sought  my  company  and  conversation 
at  noon. 

Nine   dollars   a   week   for   about   a 

dozen  weeks  will  not  pay  a  fellow's 
8  [113] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

bills  at  Yale  for  ten  months.  But  I 
hoped  to  save  enough  to  reach  New 
Haven  and  support  myself  for  a  week 
or  two,  at  the  risk  of  finding  a  chance 
to  earn  my  board  and  expenses.  Be- 
sides, this  ironwork  gave  me  superior 
physical  strength,  which  is  a  good  part 
of  any  preparation  for  college.  At 
night  I  read  Carlyle  and  Emerson, 
Latin  and  German,  in  anticipation  of 
work  at  Yale.  In  the  middle  of  the 
summer  I  received  a  word  from  Doctor 
Beard  of  the  American  Missionary 
Association  in  New  York,  saying,  "I 
am  off  for  Europe,  and  when  I  return 
in  the  fall  I  expect  to  find  you  at  Yale." 
The  note  of  that  "expectation" 
sounded  like  a  challenge,  and  I  re- 
doubled my  determination  and  easily 
passed  by  all  the  huge  temptations  of 
a  great  city.  On  Sundays  I  attended 
Moody's  church  and  the  city  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association.  It  ap- 
[114] 


PREPARING   FOR   YALE 

peared  strange  to  me  that  out  of  40,000 
negroes  I  saw  no  other  one  at  this 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
during  the  whole  summer. 

I  became  acquainted  with  Paul  Lau- 
rence Dunbar,  the  negro  poet,  who  was 
living  in  Chicago.  He  cheered  me  on 
and  wrote  encouraging  letters  until  I 
had  finished  at  Yale.  He  said  that 
a  course  at  Harvard  had  always  been 
the  unrealized  ambition  of  his  life— 
and  how  he  had  earned  his  breakfasts 
a  few  years  before  by  walking  seven 
miles  on  the  hard  pavements  of  Chi- 
cago. I  was  impressed  with  the  pos- 
sible consequences  to  one  who  has  to 
battle  against  the  sort  of  social  and 
economic  world  that  is  presented  to  a 
black  boy  in  the  average  Northern  city. 
It  might  destroy  his  health  and  injure 
his  morals.  There  was  pathos  in  Dun- 
bar's constant  praise  of  the  fact  that  I 
[115] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

did  not  touch  any  kind  of  strong  drink 
nor  any  form  of  tobacco. 

With  a  faith  astonishing  to  remember 
I  left  Chicago  in  September,  settled 
my  preliminary  bills  at  Yale  and  was 
enrolled  as  a  junior,  with  fifteen  dollars 
left  in  my  pocket  and  the  necessity  of 
finding  work  to  earn  my  board  and 
room.  I  secured  work  in  the  roof  gar- 
den and  restaurant  of  the  city  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association,  where  I 
could  assist  the  kitchen  force  in  various 
sorts  of  work  and  wash  the  windows 
to  earn  my  board.  Board  is  a  large 
and  necessary  item. 

A  few  days  afterwards  there  came  a 

letter  from  Mr.  D.   Stuart  Dodge  of 

New  York  City  saying  that  he    had 

heard  from  Doctor  Andrews  of  Talladega 

College,  that  I  was  at  Yale,  well  started, 

inclosing  a  check  for  fifty  dollars,  and 

adding  that  he  had  one  more  fifty  for 

my  use  whenever  I  should  advise  him 
[116] 


PREPARING  FOR   YALE 

that  it  was  needed.  He  spoke  like  a 
familiar  friend,  although  I  had  never 
heard  his  name  before.  I  put  the 
money  in  the  New  Haven  Savings  Bank 
and  advised  the  donor,  with  thanks, 
that  I  was  earning  my  board  and  should 
certainly  not  need  more  money  until 
the  beginning  of  the  next  term,  after 
Christmas,  when  tuition  bills  and  new 
books  might  bring  the  need.  Some- 
thing in  my  letter  appealed  to  the  favor 
of  this  good  man.  He  sent  a  second 
fifty  and  promised  a  third  fifty  upon 
my  request.  He  read  my  letter  to  his 
aged  mother,  Mrs.  William  Dodge,  then 
over  ninety  years  of  age,  and  she  in- 
sisted that  twenty-five  dollars  addi- 
tional be  sent  me  on  her  personal  check, 
with  the  special  direction  that  it  be 
spent  for  winter  clothes.  The  thought- 
ful and  sympathetic  woman  heard  that 
I   was  from   the   South.     This  friend 

whom  I  had  never  seen  did  even  more; 
[117] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

he  wrote  to  his  cousin,  Sec.  Anson 
Phelps  Stokes  of  Yale  University  and 
advised  him  of  my  presence  among  the 
thousands  of  that  institution.  Mr. 
Stokes  pleasantly  invited  me  to  com- 
mand his  assistance  when  I  needed  it. 
I  could  have  created  the  need  by  stop- 
ping the  process  of  earning  my  board, 
but  I  instinctively  felt  that  the  work 
was  better. 

By  their  unpatronizing  spirit  through 
all  of  this,  these  people  lifted  up  and 
established  my  respect  for  mankind. 
They  conferred  a  blessing  upon  me  as 
if  it  were  a  joy  to  them,  and  asked  to 
help  me  as  one  might  request  a  favor. 

Encouraged  and  edified  by  such 
noble  spirits  at  the  start  I  do  not  now 
wonder  that  I  reached  upward  with 
body  and  mind  and  entered  upon  two 
of  the  most  interesting  and  successful 
years  of  all  my  educational  career. 

[1181 


IX 

YALE— THE  HENRY  JAMES  TEN  EYCK 
ORATORICAL  CONTEST 


IX 
YALE— THE  HENRY  JAMES  TEN  EYCK 
ORATORICAL  CONTEST 

TV/TY  FIRST  year  at  Yale  was  full 
of  experiences  for  which  former 
school  struggles  had  in  a  measure  pre- 
pared me.  After  the  Christmas  exam- 
inations, when  students  are  graded  for 
the  first  term's  work,  I  was  classed  in 
Grade  A,  which  according  to  the  policy 
of  the  Self-Help  Bureau  exempted  me 
from  payment  of  tuition,  and  I  stayed 
in  Grade  A,  never  paying  another  dol- 
lar of  tuition  during  my  years  at  Yale. 
Board  I  could  earn,  and  other  expenses 
I  could  manage.  A  room  in  White 
Hall  was  secured  by  the  kindness  of 
Dean  Wright,  into  whose  Latin  class 
I  had  luckily  fallen.  After  Christmas 
my  Yale  studentship  was  no  longer  an 
[  121  ] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

experiment,  and  I  set  out  with  confi- 
dence on  the  run  toward  June. 

Early  in  the  year  there  appeared  on 
the  bulletin  ten  subjects  for  the  "Ten 
Eyck  Prize"  in  oratory.  Among  them 
was  the  simple  word,  "Hayti."  The 
oration  is  first  written  and  passed  in 
under  an  assumed  name;  there  were 
over  three  hundred  men  in  my  class 
and  about  thirty-five  passed  in  papers. 
Of  these  the  judges  chose  ten  to  enter 
the  first  speaking  contest.  At  this 
first  speaking  five  are  dropped  and  five 
advanced  to  the  final  contest.  The 
five  who  are  dropped  receive  the  five 
third  prizes.  Of  the  five  who  are  ad- 
vanced the  successful  one  will  receive 
the  first  prize  and  the  four  will  receive 
the  four  second  prizes. 

I  decided  to  win  the  first  prize.     It 

is  a  bold  thing  to  acknowledge,  but 

such   was   my   decision.      I  kept   my 

work  at  the  Young  Men's  Christian 

[122] 


YALE— CONTEST 


Association  until  I  should  see  my  name 
among  the  ten.  Once  among  the  ten 
I  felt  as  sure  to  win  the  first  prize  as  I 
had  ever  felt  that  I  would  master  the 
difficulties  of  a  lesson. 

About  three  weeks  before  the  time 
for  the  final  contest,  which  was  to  take 
place  about  the  first  of  April,  the  "ten" 
were  published  and  my  name  appeared 
with  the  subject  Hayti. 

My  subsequent  plans  and  decisions 
seem  as  audacious  to  me  now  as  they 
must  to  the  reader  of  this  narrative. 
I  told  my  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation friends  that  my  name  was 
among  the  Ten  Eyck  "ten,"  and  that 
the  first  prize  would  settle  my  bills 
for  the  rest  of  the  year,  and  that  I 
should  win  if  I  gave  up  extra  work  and 
devoted  myself  to  the  last  three  weeks 
of  the  contest.  "If  you  do  not  win," 
they  said,  kindly,  "you  may  return." 
I  wrote  Doctor  Andrews  of  Talladega 
[123] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

College  that  I  was  among  the  ten  and 
that  I  would  be  among  the  "five"  at  the 
close  of  that  week.  After  the  prelim- 
inary contest  I  wrote  him  that  I  was 
one  of  the  five  and  that  I  would  win 
the  first  prize  two  weeks  later  unless 
the  gods  should  interfere.  I  learned 
later  that  Doctor  Andrews  read  these 
missives  in  public  as  fast  as  he  received 
them  in  the  South,  and  they  must  have 
seemed  utter  audacity  to  all  but  him. 
On  April  1  in  College  Street  Hall  I  was 
awarded  the  first  prize  by  the  five 
judges. 

My  ambition  to  win  was  stimulated 
by  a  desire  to  further  the  acquaintance 
of  other  peoples  with  my  race.  I  had 
noticed  that  when  I  did  my  classwork 
among  the  best,  more  curiosity  was 
awakened  than  when  a  Jew  or  a  Jap- 
anese ranked  among  the  best.  The 
surprise  with  which  I  was  taken  struck 

me  as  due  to  a  lack  of  expectation  in 
[124] 


YALE— CONTEST 


my  fellows,  and  I  would  succeed  in 
order  to  cause  others  to  expect  more 
of  the  American  negro. 

The  negro  students  were  less  than 
one-half  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  three 
thousand  men  at  Yale.  The  negro 
might  not  be  expected  to  win  often. 
But  judging  from  the  press  and  personal 
comment  that  followed,  it  would  seem 
that  the  whole  world  was  a  little  too 
much  surprised. 

But  not  all  that  was  said  and  done 
was  prompted  by  curious  surprise  rather 
than  positive  appreciation.  The  next 
morning  I  found  in  the  Yale  post  office 
a  check  for  fifty  dollars  with  apprecia- 
tion from  the  Yale  Glee,  Banjo  and 
Mandolin  Clubs  Association.  For 
weeks  there  came  daily  twenty-five  or 
more  appreciative  letters.  Mrs.  Co- 
rinne  Roosevelt  Robinson,  sister  of 
the  President,  had  never  quite  forgot- 
ten me  since  my  little  summer  cam- 
[125] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

paign  speech  in  1900,  and  she  sent 
Godspeed  and  a  personal  check.  One 
of  the  most  highly  appreciated  letters 
came  from  ex-Pres.  Grover  Cleveland. 
A  good  lady  of  Newport  gave  me  my 
first  and  only  diamond  pin.  There 
came  through  the  mails  from  New 
York  City  three  fifty-dollar  gold  cer- 
tificates in  an  anonymous  letter  signed 
by  "An  Unknown  Well-wisher."  It 
contained  half  a  dozen  words,  the  brief- 
est and  the  fullest  missive  ever  sent 
me.  I  remembered  the  text  that  begins 
"Unto  him  that  hath." 

So  many  good  and  sensible  letters 
were  bound  to  be  offset  by  some  others 
of  more  or  less  eccentric  ideas  and  sug- 
gestions. Some  organization  in  Ken- 
tucky, which  seemed  from  their  liter- 
ature to  have  had  some  designs  on 
Hayti  for  some  time,  wrote  me  a  pro- 
posal that  they  would  seize  the  island 
by  some  sort  of  filibustering  expedition 
[126] 


YALE— CONTEST 


from  the  United  States  if  I  would  ac- 
cept the  presidency.  Shades  of  Dessa- 
lines  and  Toussaint  L'Overture!  I 
had  no  desire  to  add  to  the  volcanic 
little  government's  already  too  num- 
erous chief  executives. 

The  appreciation  of  my  classmates 
was  generous.  When  my  name  was 
seen  among  the  ten,  there  was  a  mix- 
ture of  amused  and  sympathetic  inter- 
est. The  proportion  of  amusement 
was  overdone  only  by  one  Jew  who  was 
an  unsuccessful  aspirant  for  the  honor 
and  who  referred  to  me  among  the  boys 
as  "the  black  Demosthenes."  I  told 
him  it  would  have  been  more  Jewlike 
for  him  to  say  black  David,  or  black 
Jacob.  When  I  entered  the  five,  I  was 
taken  more  seriously.  And  when  I 
won  the  final  contest  there  was  a  burst 
of  generous  and  manly  enthusiasm. 

I  never  like  to  describe  human  ugli- 
ness for  its  own  sake,  but  there  was 
[127] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

one  fellow  who  is  worth  describing 
because  he  is  such  a  good  illustration 
of  a  type — not  a  Yale  type,  but  a  type 
of  man.  Among  the  best  and  seem- 
ingly sincerest  of  my  Yale  friends  were 
some  boys  from  the  South,  especially 
from  the  freedom-loving  hills  of  the 
border  states.  But  there  was  one 
fellow  from  the  state  school  of  my  own 
state.  We  entered  Yale  together  and 
he,  knowing  me  to  be  a  Southern  negro 
fighting  for  my  very  existence,  was  at 
first  very,  very  patronizing.  He  would 
"hello"  me  a  block  away,  inquire  with 
a  half  amused,  half  good-natured  smile 
"how  I  was  making  it?"  and  make 
every  effort  of  bland  superiority.  I 
uniformly  and  politely  accepted  all  his 
good  advances,  never  seeking  them. 
Soon  my  classmates  began  to  talk  on 
the  campus  about  my  work.  He  be- 
came less  friendly — I  had  to  be  nearer 

to  him  than  the  distance  of    a  block 
[128] 


YALE— CONTEST 


to  get  a  "hello."  After  the  Christmas 
"exams"  the  boys  had  tales  to  tell; 
how  I  walked  out  from  nearly  every 
examination  when  most  of  them  were 
not  half  through.  Then  he  hardly 
spoke  when  he  met  me  face  to  face; 
I  tried  hard  to  be  uniform  and  uncon- 
scious of  change.  Next  day  after  the 
oratorical  contest  I  met  him  squarely 
on  the  street,  and  as  I  was  about  to 
give  the  friendly  greeting  he  pulled 
down  his  hat  over  his  eyes  and  passed 
as  one  passes  a  lamp-post. 

People  naturally  ask  how  I  fared 
during  my  next  year,  my  senior  year, 
at  Yale.  A  month  before  my  gradu- 
ation I  was  invited  to  address  the  State 
Congregational  Association  of  Illinois, 
and  when  a  minister  of  that  body  asked 
me  that  question  I  told  the  story  of  a 
negro  woman  in  the  south  who  believed 
in    "voodooism."     Her   husband    was 

fussy   and   disagreeable,   so  she  went 
5  [ 129  ] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

to  the  "conjure  doctor"  to  get  a  rem- 
edy for  the  old  man's  distemper.  The 
conjurer  gave  her  a  bottle  of  clear 
liquid,  and  directed  that  when  the 
"fuss"  started  in  the  house  she  must 
take  a  mouthful  of  it  herself,  and  added 
his  particular  direction  that  it  must 
not  be  swallowed  under  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  after  being  taken  into  the  mouth. 
She  followed  directions  and  the  vica- 
rious treatment  completely  cured  the 
old  man.  Returning  to  the  doctor 
in  astonishment  she  asked  what  the 
remedy  could  be,  and  he  replied:  "Cold 
water — but  it  kept  your  tongue  still!" 
But  there  is  nothing  more  generous 
and  noble  than#the  heart  of  a  boy, 
and  young  men  are  but  "boys  grown 
tall."  During  my  senior  year  they 
acknowledged  my  right  to  a  part  of 
their  world.  They  never  quite  got 
away  from  the  surprise  that  "you   do 

your    lessons    as    well    as    anybody!" 
[130] 


YALE— CONTEST 


While  crossing  the  campus  at  examina- 
tion times  I  was  often  stopped  by  a 
crowd  of  fellows  who  had  just  finished 
some  examination.  They  would  hand 
me  the  list  of  questions,  and  as  I  an- 
swered them  they  would  say,  "I  made 
it,"  or  "I  failed,"  according  as  their 
answers  had  agreed  or  disagreed  with 
mine.  "Pickens,  you  ought  to  be  a 
lawyer!"  shouted  one  fellow  after  I 
had  gone  through  such  a  list  of  ques- 
tions from  our  five-hour  law  course. 
I  could  hardly  have  registered  to  vote 
in  that  fellow's  state. 

At  graduation  time  I  was  ranked  in 
the  "Philosophical  Oration"  group 
of  the  class  who  are  credited  with 
"honors  in  all  studies."  I  had  been 
with  the  class  two  years,  just  the  time 
required  to  merit  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Key  if  one's  scholarship  warrants  it. 
So  much  was  printed  and  said  about 

my  admission  to  this  society  that  a 
[131] 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

clear  statement  might  correct  some 
error.  It  was  said  that  my  admission 
was  opposed.  Well,  a  great  university 
is  much  like  the  outside  world;  it 
holds  many  different  spirits.  No  one 
should  be  surprised  at  differences  of 
opinion  in  a  university.  In  our  senior 
year  a  resolution  was  introduced  in  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  that  no  one 
be  admitted  to  membership  that  year 
except  such  as  began  as  Freshmen.  I 
entered  Yale  as  a  Junior;  but  there  is 
no  way  of  determining  that  this  was 
a  "grandfather  clause"  inspired  by  my 
presence.  A  few  fellows  tried  mischiev- 
ously to  impress  me  that  the  legislation 
was  in  my  honor,  but  I  consistently  and 
persistently  refused  to  acknowledge  it — 
and  somehow  the  resolution  proved 
ineffective  and  I  was  awarded  a  key. 
The  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  is  based 
on   scholarship,   and   Yale   is   a   very 

democratic  community. 
[132] 


YALE— CONTEST 


After-word 
After  Yale,  what?  A  famous  lecture 
bureau  of  New  York  City  laid  before 
me  a  tempting  contract  to  be  carted 
around  over  Europe  and  America  for 
three  years  as  a  sort  of  lecture-curiosity. 
I  had  been  invited  to  speak  before 
various  dignified  gatherings,  at  New- 
port, Hartford  and  at  the  annual  ban- 
quet of  the  Citizens'  Trades  Associa- 
tion of  Cambridge,  Mass.  But  after 
seeking  and  finding  good  advice  in  the 
secretary  of  Yale  University,  the  secre- 
tary of  the  American  Missionary  Asso- 
ciation and  Paul  Laurence  Dunbar  who 
had  tried  the  curiosity-show  business, 
I  decided  that  show-lecturing  would 
be  of  doubtful  influence  on  my  future — 
although  it  would  have  given  me  an 
opportunity  to  accomplish  one  of  the 
desires  of  every  college  man,  a  visit  to 
the  Old  World. 

The  work  of  education  seemed  to 
[133] 


THE   HEIROF   SLAVES 

offer  a  greater  field  of  usefulness  to  a 
negro  than  any  other  profession.  My 
own  school  struggles  emphasized  this 
thought.  Back  to  the  South  was  my 
inclination.  That  section  is  big  with 
the  destiny  of  the  American  negro,  and 
therefore  with  the  future  of  the  negro 
race  in  the  whole  world.  After  con- 
sidering the  timely  offers  of  various 
educational  authorities,  including  those 
of  Tuskegee  and  the  American  Mis- 
sionary Association,  I  decided  to  begin 
work  in  the  American  Missionary 
Association  College  at  Talladega,  Ala.» 
where  I  have  been  teacher  of  languages 
since  leaving  Yale  in  1904.  My  experi- 
ence of  the  usefulness  of  this  institu- 
tion, as  well  as  gratitude  for  the  greatest 
of  benefits,  made  this  decision  logical 
and  good. 

On  my  way  from  New  England  to 
Talladega  a  visit  to  the  World's  Exposi- 
tion in  St.  Louis  brought  me  by  Little 
[134] 


YALE— CONTEST 


Rock,  Ark.,  and  the  scenes  and  mem- 
ories of  public-school  days,  the  "skiff- 
ferry"  and  the  "stave  factory" — and 
the  colored  citizens  and  a  few  white 
friends  gave  me  the  biggest  and  most 
pleasant  reception  of  all  my  life. 

In  the  last  six  years  it  has  been 
impossible  for  me  to  supply  all  the 
demands  upon  my  energies  as  a  lecturer 
or  speaker  at  institutions  and  gather- 
ings. I  have  visited  nearly  all  of  the 
important  negro  schools  of  the  South, 
and  it  has  given  me  a  good  look  into 
the  condition  and  needs  of  my  people. 
In  1906  I  took  up  Esperanto,  and  after 
a  correspondence  with  Esperantists  all 
over  the  world,  I  was  awarded  a  diploma 
by  the  British  Esperanto  Association. 
In  1908  Fisk  University  honored  me 
with  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts. 

In  1905  I  met  the  most  helpful  and 
the  most  enduring  good  fortune  of  all  my 
life,  the  traditional  and  the  real  "best 
[1351 


THE    HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

woman  in  the  world."  Miss  Minnie 
Cooper  McAlpine  who  like  myself  was 
a  product  of  the  American  Missionary 
Association  work,  had  graduated  at 
Tougaloo  University  in  Mississippi  and 
taught  for  three  years  in  the  American 
Missionary  Association  school  at  Meri- 
dian. Since  this  meeting  there  have 
come  in  succession  three  of  the  bright- 
est and  best  joys  that  high  heaven  lends 
to  earth,  William,  Jr.,  Hattie  Ida  and 
Ruby  Annie. 

These  latter  years  have  a  history  of 
their  own — which  can  be  better  written, 
perhaps,  when  they  are  seen  through  a 
perspective  of  years.  Had  I  written 
of  my  boyhood  experiences  right  on 
the  heels  of  their  passage,  I  could  not 
have  presented  them  in  their  truer 
light  and  proportion.  The  distance 
of  years  lends  not  merely  enchantment 
but  sobriety  to  the  view. 

To  advance  your  life  is  but  to  push 
[136] 


YALE— CONTEST 


forward  the  front  of  your  battle  to 
find  the  same  inspiriting  struggle  still. 
Oh,  the  blessing  of  a  boyhood  that 
trains  to  endurance  and  struggle!  To 
do  the  best  one  can,  wherever  placed, 
is  a  summary  of  all  the  rules  of  success. 
When  I  was  in  the  public  school  of 
Argenta,  Ark.,  I  one  day  missed  a  word 
in  the  spelling  class,  the  only  word  I 
missed  during  the  five  years,  and  a 
word  that  I  could  easily  have  spelled. 
The  teacher  took  quick  advantage  of 
the  careless  trick  of  my  brain  and 
passed  the  word  on  to  my  neighbor 
without  giving  me  the  usual  second 
trial,  saying  as  he  did  so  that  a  boy 
who  had  never  missed  a  word  had  no 
right  ever  to  miss  a  word.  He  wished, 
no  doubt,  to  punish  carelessness.  That 
one  missed  word  was  more  talked  of 
among  my  fellows  than  all  the  hun- 
dreds of  words  I  had  spelled,  and  I  was 

taught  the  lesson  that  the  man    who 
[137] 


THE   HEIR   OF   SLAVES 

succeeds  is  never  conceded  the  right 
to  fail. 

I  have  learned  that  righteousness 
and  popularity  are  not  always  yoke- 
fellows, and  sometimes  run  a  con- 
trary course.  From  early  boyhood 
I  was  laughed  at  among  my  fellows  for 
the  contemptible  weakness  of  totally 
abstaining  from  strong  drink  and  to- 
bacco, while  in  my  manhood  the  best 
of  my  fellows  commend  the  abstention 
as  a  virtue.  I  have  learned  the  uplift- 
ing lesson  that  the  real  heart  of  human- 
ity appreciates  manhood  above  things; 
as  a  copperless  struggler  I  was  often 
accorded  a  place  above  the  possessor 
of  gold.  I  have  been  impressed,  not 
that  every  single  thought  and  deed  in 
the  world  is  good,  but  that  the  resultant 
line  of  humanity's  movement  is  in  the 
direction  of  righteousness,  and  that 
human  life  and  the  world  are  on  the 

whole  good  things. 

[138] 


B  m  &F 

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